NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- Weathered sticks peek like day-old whiskers out of the murky harbor here, not far offshore from the fuel tank farms, aging factories and highways that line the waterfront.
Easy to mistake for debris, the sticks actually mark the boundaries of dozens of private shellfish beds, where acres of oysters are cultivated on the harbor bottom.
From waters at the western end of Long Island Sound, Connecticut's shellfish "farmers" last year produced 800,000 bushels of oysters -- more than 10 times what Maryland and Virginia watermen took from the Chesapeake Bay.
While Maryland watermen expect slim pickings again when their oyster season opens Thursday, their counterparts in Connecticut expect another bumper crop.
The contrasts are jarring. Since the mid-1980s, microscopic parasites have sharply cut Chesapeake oyster harvests, once the largest in the nation. Yet Connecticut's take has soared since 1987, when it was less than 70,000 bushels.
By 1992, Connecticut ranked second in the nation behind Louisiana in production, and the premium price commanded by "Blue Points," as Long Island Sound oysters are known, yielded $44 million for the harvest, an income second to none.
Why the revival? Favorable water and weather conditions, experts here say, but also a tradition of "farming" the bottom that dates to the 1700s. Add to that a willingness to adopt modern-day mechanization, replacing the traditional, labor-intensive oystering techniques still practiced in Maryland.
Aboard the Columbia, an old Coast Guard buoy tender refitted to dredge oysters, John H. Volk spreads out a map of New Haven harbor to show that much of its bottom is carved into private plots. They are the key to Connecticut's booming industry, explains Mr. Volk, the state aquaculture director. "If it's a piece of ground you can call your own, you're willing to maintain it. Without aquaculture, we wouldn't have oysters."
Maryland has never had a strong tradition of aquaculture. Though the state has set aside 10,000 acres of bay bottom for lease to raise oysters, only about 1,000 acres are used. And those private beds have not been spared by MSX and Dermo, the parasites that have ravaged 200,000 acres of public oyster bars.
The Oyster Recovery Partnership, a new nonprofit group seeking to revive the Maryland industry, sees possible lessons in the way Connecticut oyster beds are tended. MSX and Dermo never have gained more than a toehold here.
