Aquaculture

The Oyster Restoration and Aquaculture Development Plan proposed by the state Department of Natural Resources sets a new direction for managing Maryland's natural oyster populations and enhancing opportunities for farming oysters. Thus, it brings the state's oyster management efforts more in line with virtually all other regions in the world. The plan is based on the recommendations of an advisory committee of scientists, watermen, legislators, economists, environmentalists and seafood industry representatives.

Do you approve of Gov. Martin O'Malley's oyster-restoration plan, which entails prohibiting commercial harvests in much of the Chesapeake Bay while leasing other areas for aquaculture? Yes 38% No 56% Not sure 6% (1,894 votes, results not scientific) Next poll: : Do you think the threat posed by climate change has been exaggerated? Vote at baltimoresun.com/vote

Gov. Martin O'Malley's decision to set aside some of the Chesapeake Bay's most productive oyster beds as sanctuaries and spend millions of dollars on developing oyster farming in the state could prove the most positive development for the imperiled Maryland oyster in decades. The plan announced Thursday by the governor is long overdue. Maryland's oyster harvests have fallen from millions of bushels a generation ago to about 100,000 today. Declining water quality, years of excessive harvest and parasitic diseases that attack the shellfish but pose no danger to humans have taken their toll.

To praise from environmentalists and complaints from watermen, Gov. Martin O'Malley outlined plans Thursday to restore the Chesapeake Bay's depleted oysters by prohibiting commercial harvests in large portions of the bay while leasing other areas for aquaculture. Declaring that Maryland's long-standing approach to managing the bay's oysters no longer makes sense, O'Malley called for a major expansion of the current patchwork of sanctuaries, where oysters may not be removed. And he offered to help watermen move into aquaculture.

Yonathan Zohar beams like a proud parent as he cradles the freshly netted fish in his hands. He didn't catch this glistening branzini. He raised it - and thousands more - in large fiberglass tanks at the Columbus Center at the Inner Harbor. "This is a happy moment here," says Zohar, director of the Center of Marine Biotechnology at the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute. "Green fish, as good as it gets. Clean, environmentally friendly, sushi-quality fish, delivered to the restaurant a few hours after harvesting."

SOLOMONS - As watermen have done for decades, Ronny Jetmore guides his small boat into a creek off the Patuxent River to tong oysters from the bottom. Oysters, once so bountiful in the Chesapeake Bay that their shells were used to pave roads, have become scarce in recent years - decimated by disease and by pollution that has smothered their habitat. But Jetmore knows where to find these oysters because he helped put them there. In a departure from the hunter-gatherer tradition of Maryland's watermen, Jetmore and others in Calvert County have banded together to try raising for themselves what nature is no longer providing in abundance.

Seeking to boost Maryland's fledgling aquaculture industry, the O'Malley administration plans to introduce legislation to make it easier for people and businesses to raise oysters or other shellfish in the Chesapeake Bay. The administration has drafted a bill that would overhaul the state's law that now limits leasing of the water and the bay bottom to private entities that want to raise oysters or clams. The measure was presented last night at the state's Aquaculture Coordinating Council meeting in Annapolis.

In recent years, Maryland watermen have harvested clams and oysters from Atlantic coastal bays averaging slightly more than $350,000 in total dockside value. This year, entrepreneurs from the neighboring Virginia Eastern Shore will bring in about $30 million. That's a lot of clams. The difference is one state has a robust aquaculture industry and the other does not. Virginia's hard-shell clams are born in a hatchery and tended to in beds leased from the state until they grow large enough to market.

CASTLE HAVEN-- -- Down a one-lane road past barren fields teeming with squawking Canada geese is something that hasn't been found on the Eastern Shore for more than two decades - a river filled with oysters. And Kevin McClarren knows how many are there, because he and his crew have planted every single one. Five million healthy oysters on 3,000 floats on the water's surface, with anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 oysters each. Every day, McClarren and his four workers - all of whom have degrees in biology or marine science - wade into the water, each with multiple layers of sweat shirts, to tend to their burgeoning crop.