Maryland may shrink oyster sanctuaries

Maryland watermen may have more places to dredge for oysters soon in the Chesapeake Bay.

The amount of the bay's bottom set aside for oyster protection would shrink nearly 1,000 acres, or 11 percent, under a proposal drawn up by officials with the state Department of Natural Resources.

The changes on the Lower Shore include opening a 100-acre sanctuary to watermen in Tangier Sound near the mouth of the Annemessex River. A nearly 17,000-acre sanctuary on the Nanticoke River would be expanded by 845 acres. And the Manokin and Nanticoke rivers are named as two of the eight candidates for significant oyster reef restoration.

The plan, though, is drawing fire from some environmental groups, including the influential Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

“There is no scientific justification for opening these 1,000 acres of sanctuaries for harvest," said Alison Prost, head of the group's Maryland chapter, in a statement.

Natural Resources staff members culled the recommendations from conversations with representatives of the environmental, scientific and seafood industry communities, said Stephen Schatz, the department's spokesman. The agency's goal was to strike a "middle path" on oyster management, he said.

The report is titled a "strawman" proposal because it is intended only as a first draft, he added.

“It was basically the term we used to say it’s not formed up, it’s not solid," Schatz said. "It’s still a work in progress.”

The agency's Oyster Advisory Commission got its first look at the plan earlier this month. The commission, which includes a medley of bay interest groups, is likely to take several months to send a recommendation to the department's secretary, Mark Belton. The department would issue the final decision.

Overfishing and disease have decimated the famed bivalve, leaving behind about 1 percent of its historic stock in Maryland.

Maryland's oyster haul plummeted from an all-time high of 15 million bushels in the 1880s to a low of about 26,000 bushels in 2004. The total harvest rocketed above 300,000 in 2013 and 2014, some of the highest totals in years. Researchers attribute the jump to hearty reproduction in 2010 and 2012.

Maryland is six years into a campaign to rebuild the oyster's population in the bay that centers on placing 20 to 30 percent of the state's oyster habitat into sanctuaries. It is still "too early to know" whether oyster bars placed off-limits to fishing in 2010 are healthier than their counterparts that are routinely harvested, Natural Resources scientists said in a report last summer.

The proposed changes would reduce that total from 24 to 21 percent, said Donald Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and a member of the oyster commission.

"We kind of seem to be drifting off the road and at risk of crossing the yellow line," he said.

The plan also would create for the first time areas where "rotational" harvesting would be allowed. It calls for designating 4 to 6 areas as what Schatz called "semi-sanctuaries," where fishing would be allowed every three or four years and replanted afterward.

Among the areas under consideration is the Hooper Straits in Dorchester County.

Watermen have largely embraced the proposal as a hopeful sign that regulators will make it easier for them to make a living. But at least one Somerset County waterman said what they're being offered is, in some cases, too little to make much difference.

Ron Hall pulled into the Small Boat Harbor in Crisfield at about 3 p.m. Wednesday after unloading his 10 bushels at a nearby seafood house.

The Somerset sanctuary pegged for declassification is smaller than the state estimates, maybe about 40 or 50 acres, Hall said. Regulators say it's too small to properly enforce a fishing ban. Hall said it's also too small for his dredge.

He blames Gov. Larry Hogan for not pushing harder for watermen.

"This is just a token thrown in by the governor who said he was going to help us when he got in there," Hall said. "He's not going to get another vote from me."

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