In Saxis oyster war, watermen prevail

Boat after boat motors into the harbor at Saxis, hulls brimming with freshly dredged piles of oysters.

Virginia fishing regulations establish a kind of derby, limiting these commercial watermen to up to eight bushels per man or up to 24 per boat per day. They can start at sunrise but must hang up their dredges by 2 p.m.

But this is 10 a.m. That's a full day's work in just under three hours.

"But there's no oysters there," says Wesley Williams, a Parksley-based seafood buyer, as he watches the boats glide by this Thursday morning.

He's joking but not really. As watermen in these parts see it, each bucket of bivalves is a big heap of "I told you so."

In September, the state's top oyster scientist suggested closing two public harvesting areas in Pocomoke Sound just south of the Maryland-Virginia state line. Public Grounds 9 and 10, as they are known, needed a break to recover, said Jim Wesson, who oversees oyster restoration for the Virginia Marine Resources Commission.

“At this point, staff cannot recommend opening these two areas," he told commissioners in September. "The little teeny bit of broodstock in there may be important next year for getting some recruitment on the shells that we planted.”

Their livelihood on the line, several watermen made the 2½-hour trip to Newport News to protest the move — three times for three meetings.

One waterman said he knew the grounds were in better shape than Wesson found during his surveys the previous summer and winter because he has been harvesting the area for years.

“If I come to your house, would I know as much about it as you would all day, that you’re there every day? That’s our house," Thomas Pruitt said, addressing Wesson as much as the commission itself. "All I hear is take, take, take."

The board agreed to open the two areas but only for eight days each in November.

“I don’t see any problem with just opening these areas for one season and see who’s right," said board member John Zydron. "If there’s nothing to be caught out there, what do we lose?"

The controversy is the latest chapter in the decades-old struggle between conservation and commercial interests in the Chesapeake Bay's prized oyster population.

Last season's commercial haul of more than 658,000 bushels in Virginia waters was the most since 1982-83. But it was still a far cry from the millions of bushels that made it to port in the 1950s.

The good times are likely to come to an end this season, Wesson predicted. Surveys of the bay and its tributaries showed low numbers of baby oysters, known as spats, in 2011, 2013 and 2014. Since it takes a few years for oysters to reach market size, that poor reproduction should start taking a toll at the marketplace this year, he said.

Grounds 9 and 10 present a microcosm of the bay's ills.

Using a pair of hand tongs, a device that resembles an aquatic post-hole digger, Wesson checked the areas for oyster density at scores of individual locations guaranteed to be random by statistical software. What he found wasn't encouraging: barely one or two market-size oysters per square meter.

For oysters to multiply, proximity is key, Wesson said in an interview. The males release sperm and the females release eggs in the water. If they're too far apart, they won't meet and make new oysters.

Wesson also had trouble finding spats in the area between Saxis and Onancock, suggesting the process may have already started. Allowing watermen to scrape up the mature oysters this season puts the future of those areas in jeopardy, he said.

“The issue is, you’re not going to have reproduction. Those are the oysters they’re taking up that are going to be spawners. Yes, they can make a day’s work. I never said they couldn’t take their limit. But once they’re gone, they’re all gone," he said.

He isn't surprised to hear that Saxis boats are making their quotas. Dredges are devilishly efficient at scooping up everything in their path, he said.

Ground 10 was open Nov. 2-5 and 9-12. Ground 9 opens Monday for its two four-day weeks.

Watermen dispute that dredging depletes future oyster harvests, arguing that the process churns up fresh material for spats to latch onto.

If they hadn't been allowed to dredge in 10, the large oysters would simply have died instead of going to market, said Tony Thornes, who easily hit his eight-bushel maximum Thursday.

"They're as big as your foot," he added.

He doesn't understand the logic of shutting down such fertile spots, and he aims his distrust squarely at the Marine Resources Commission's staff.

"It seems they want everyone on welfare," Thornes said. "I don't get it."

He and other watermen base their oyster estimates on catches in privately leased tracts that neighbor the public grounds. There, oysters can be hauled up any time of the year, and this year that hasn't been a problem, they say.

For his part, Donnie Porter was tying up his boat back at the Saxis harbor just two hours and 45 minutes after he first set off that morning. The oysters are plentiful here, he said. If he had to go elsewhere, he would have to go across the bay to the Rappahannock River, which would involves a long, gas-guzzling drive and a hotel stay.

"It's the best that it's ever been, but they're still cutting us back," he said.

On Twitter @Jeremy_Cox

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