"So far, so good," says Zinn. "They're not dying."
Indeed, they're remarkably free of disease. George Abbe, a Morgan State scientist, says he found a trace of Dermo in only two oysters out of 20 collected from the creek for examination.
As promising as the effort appears, Zinn says that success is far from assured. The oysters are not ready for harvest, so disease could still take a toll. And the group still has to figure out the mechanics of splitting the proceeds from any oysters its work produces. The watermen have invested time and labor as well as the $7,000.
Watermen still prefer their traditional roaming way of life, Zinn says. They don't have a lot of money to invest in starting a business, and they can't afford to work at it for two or three years before showing a profit.
For now, though, they're willing to try this low-tech form of aquaculture as a potential fallback for times when they can't catch enough in the wild.
"The whole concept was to give the guys some employment between oyster season and crab season," Zinn says. "It wasn't meant to make a bundle on."
The Calvert model
Other watermen are watching the Calvert experiment, with at least one group on the Eastern Shore poised to follow suit.
State officials are watching, too. They hope it can serve as a model for weaning watermen from reliance on Maryland's traditional, publicly subsidized fishery, in which the state produced oysters for anyone to harvest. The state is aiming to focus its efforts on rebuilding the oyster population by planting them in sanctuaries off-limits to harvest, while encouraging watermen to grow their own oysters.
"I think the reality is we could have a really good oyster industry based on aquaculture," says William Eichbaum, chairman of Maryland's Oyster Advisory Commission. The panel is eyeing proposals to boost aquaculture via technical assistance, loans or grants to help watermen get started, and changing state laws to allow more leasing of bay bottom. "I think we need to give every opportunity to the guys in the industry in the old way ... to transition into that new industry."
Though commercial fishermen in Florida and Virginia have successfully shifted to farming clams, it is unclear whether the Calvert watermen's approach to oyster aquaculture will prove viable, cautions Mark Luckenbach, a scientist with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. Dropping spat onto shells on the bottom is a relatively low-budget operation. Successful oyster-raising ventures elsewhere are using racks to produce big oysters for raw bars and restaurants, Luckenbach notes. These oysters on the half-shell command higher prices, but also demand more investment in equipment and labor.
Yet the Calvert group is looking to expand its oyster growing - leasing more bottom from the state and working in partnership with Morgan State on developing a small hatchery at its lab. By refurbishing rundown settling tanks and installing some new equipment, the scientists hope to produce more baby oysters and to train at least a few watermen in that phase of the business. The lab recently received a $470,000 federal grant for the project.
"We've looked long and hard to find a group that was willing to buy into this," says J. Hixson, a Morgan State scientist. "We hope it works, for their sake and for everybody's sake."
