OC fishermen build reefs for new fisheries, blue water

On a frigid winter morning, the Morning Star, piloted by Capt. Monty Hawkins, moves east from the Ocean City Fishing Center.

Its cargo is a modest group of volunteers, a couple bags of Royal Farms fried chicken and six and a half tons of cement blocks.

Hawkins, of the nonprofit Ocean City Reef Foundation, and his crew are dedicated to rebuilding the reefs off the coast of Ocean City, dropping off tons of cement blocks that plant the seeds for healthy fish populations. Formerly abundant with vibrant fisheries, oyster reefs and, further off the shore, corals, the coastal reefs were decimated by large scale trawling in the mid-20th century.

"This kind of rock that builds these reefs, you can pick it up and crush it in your hand," Hawkins said. "It's so fragile, and what they would do is drag these massive pieces of machinery across the bottom, which would destroy these reefs."

Since the passage of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery and Conservation Act in 1976, and ensuing revisions through the 1990s which further regulated trawl fishing in federal waters, overfishing in the mid-Atlantic has been significantly reduced. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 2015 report on fishing stocks, only two mid-Atlantic stocks are subjects of overfishing: summer flounder and yellowtail flounder.

Despite strides in regulating fishing, Hawkins said the devastation to the habitats is already done, making the work of the Ocean City fisherman and other environmental groups even more important to ocean protection as new threats arise.

Researchers say climate change continues to endanger the ocean's health, and as President Donald Trump has taken office, his executive orders have threatened previous administration's protection orders that could lead to oil drilling and other actions previously considered dangerous to the environment.

"Back in the 1960s, you'd hear about people catching white marlin seven or eight miles off the coast," Hawkins said. "Now, it's 30 or 40 miles, and that's because these fisheries have just been ruined."

Hawkins' work, bringing out either large hauls of cement in one go or dropping a few blocks during routine fishing, aims to bring back these fisheries by promoting the resurgence of crucial marine life habitats — oyster reefs being a major component.

The importance of oysters

Oysters play a crucial part in the fragile oceanic ecosystem, one which Hawkins said is invaluable in keeping the ocean water clean.

"If you look at the ocean now, the water is green," Hawkins said. "Sometimes it gets so bad that it almost looks like paste. That's phytoplankton."

Phytoplankton are microscopic, single-celled plants that serve as the basis for the oceanic food chain. While crucial to the overall survival of marine life and the primary diet for oysters, left to grow unchecked, phytoplankton pose a threat of algal blooms.

"When you have a lot of algae, what that can lead to is low dissolved oxygen levels, which are harmful to marine life," said Bo Lusk, a coastal scientist with the Nature Conservancy in Virginia.

The death and subsequent decay of the phytoplankton effectively drains the habitat of oxygen, leading to large scale marine deaths known as fish kills. An algal bloom in 2016 is suspected to have been a contributing factor in a large scale horseshoe and blue crab kill in July. In this incident, an estimated 300 crabs washed ashore in the Assawoman Bay.

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Lusk said the rapid decline in oyster populations since the 1950s is a product of disease and overfishing.

"What happened was there were a number of different oyster diseases that popped up that were killing off oysters, and we just kept fishing as if there weren't," Lusk said. "So, a lot of the oysters that held the disease-resistant traits they could've passed on were just fished out."

Oysters function essentially as natural filtration systems, sucking up water and pulling out potentially harmful nutrients. Their faltering populations have been notably seen in the Chesapeake Bay where, according to NOAA, oyster populations number less than 1 percent of what they were prior to bottom trawling's heyday.

However, the Chesapeake Bay's oyster decimation is not unique to the region, a point which Hawkins stresses adamantly.

"Everyone thinks of oysters as a Chesapeake Bay problem," Hawkins said. "But this is something that has happened across the coast, and is an ocean problem, too."

While commercial oyster dredging was banned by the state of Maryland in 2008, much of the damage had already been done, and the impacts were already well underway.

Sandi Smith of the Maryland Coastal Bays Program said the effect of oyster loss has become apparent in the northern bays, such as Assawoman.

"We, of course, don't have the pollution factors that the Chesapeake has," Smith said. "But there are still a very clear loss of oyster populations in the northern bays."

A murky future

While the rebuilding efforts, from volunteer services like the Ocean City Reef Foundation to state-funded projects, are becoming more commonplace, the delicate future of the coastal reefs is ambiguous. In tandem with efforts to rebuild, new threats arise in the forms of climate change and possible drilling endeavors.

"What oysters need right now is substrate," Lusk said. "Whether that be in the form of shells or oyster castles, these habitats for the oysters to grow off of need to be rebuilt in order for the populations to rebound back to what they once were."

However, the looming threat of climate change offers the possibility of throwing a wrench into the population rebuild plans. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, as carbon dioxide becomes more and more prevalent in the atmosphere, dissolved carbon dioxide in oceanic waters has the potential to devastate marine life, by way of making water more acidic.

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The effect of higher acidity in marine environments has been demonstrated in the Chesapeake Bay, where low pH levels contributed to by sewage and other forms of pollution led to the erosion of oyster shells and substrate, according to a study by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. For cold water corals, a higher surface water temperature can lead to "bleaching," and inevitable death, further causing habitat losses for fish populations, according to the EPA.

An additional threat to deep sea corals rears its head in the form of the potential for oil drilling in the coastal deep sea canyons, such as the Baltimore Canyon off the coast of Maryland and the Norfolk Canyon off the Virginia coast. These canyons, two of 13 in the Mid-Atlantic Bight Region, have been considered for oil excavation. On Dec. 20, former President Obama signed an executive order that would bar oil excavation in any of these canyons across the Atlantic and Arctic.

However, President Trump has already reversed other oil policies on which Obama had formerly signed off. Specifically, the Keystone XL, formerly disapproved of by the past administration, now has now been expedited by the Trump administration. Additionally, another Trump executive order calls for expedited review of environmental impact on "high priority infrastructure projects," which can be presented by any senator or secretary, if the White House Council on Environmental Quality approves.

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Lusk said that, while oyster populations may not be harmed by oil drilling, deep sea corals would be threatened.

"I would hope that if there were any oil drilling done out there, that they would follow a plan to be as safe as possible," Lusk said. "Oysters would probably be fine, but those cold water corals could really be hurt, especially if there's a spill. I would be really concerned for the loss of habitat."

Exploratory drilling in the Mid-Atlantic Bight Region was first conducted in the mid-1980s, but was later abandoned due to economic concerns. There are currently no active leases in the canyon.

Hope for the future

These concerns, though a fear for Hawkins, are not paramount. Instead, he aims to rebuild what he can — bringing back ocean habitats, one block at a time.

"He should be sainted for what he does," Ocean City Reef Foundation volunteer Beau Lyons said. "There's just not enough people out there who really want to make a difference."

Hawkins, with passionate fervor, holds up photos of pyramids he has built off the coast of Ocean City — once bare cement now teeming with life. He cites the specifics, from the Latin names of vibrant corals to a 1970s-borne project to curb mosquito populations by using discarded tires to build reefs.

Despite the complexity of his endeavor and the innumerable ecological, economical and historical factors that it carries along as baggage, Hawkins's ultimate goal is simple.

"I just want to make the ocean blue again," Hawkins said.