Dermo

Oyster ProblemsIn a recent Opinion*Commentary article, Frank Gray asserted that the decline of the oyster industry is due to the failure of the state to encourage private oyster culture and that the industry could be revived if private leasing of the public beds were allowed. He also stated that little is done to permit leasing in Maryland.Without question, private leasing has had a difficult history in Maryland. There has always been opposition from watermen to the idea of relinquishing public oyster bars to private citizens for personal gain because they feared large corporations controlling the leases.

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Fewer oysters in the Chesapeake Bay are dying from the diseases that have devastated the bivalve population in recent decades, leading some to believe they may be developing a natural resistance, according to a new report by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. Dermo and MSX, the two parasites that have been killing oysters, still afflict them throughout the bay — but scientists are seeing more oysters surviving, the Annapolis-based environmental group reports. Citing data from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, the report says that disease-related oyster mortality in the upper bay declined from 2005 through 2009 to 17 percent a year, down from 29 percent on average from 1985 through 2004.

Maryland watermen are wrapping up their best oyster season in five years, an improvement state officials attribute to natural conditions and government efforts.The harvest for the season, which ends tomorrow, is expected to top 300,000 bushels, according to preliminary tallies by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. That is more than three times the all-time low catch of 79,618 bushels in the 1993-1994 season, but well below the 1 million-plus harvests recorded as recently as the mid-1980s.

Oyster season ended yesterday, and the state's preliminary figures support one oysterman's assessment that it was "a pretty decent year."The state Department of Natural Resources, which monitors the oyster harvest by weekly counts of the "buy tickets" used when a waterman sells his catch at the dock, projected a harvest of 128,000 bushels with a market value of $2.8 million. The oyster season runs October through March."The disease levels declined," DNR shellfish biologist Chris Judy said.

Oyster reef considered for Patapsco mouthThe state Department of Natural Resources is considering whether to place an artificial oyster reef in the mouth of the Patapsco River as part of its effort to save the fishery.Two fish diseases that thrive in salt water have ravaged the oyster population in the Chesapeake Bay, said DNR spokesman John Verrico. The lower Patapsco may be safe from Dermo and MSX because it has a lower salinity, he said.The DNR has never looked at the Patapsco in the past because the water quality never was considered good enough.

AT THE RECENT summit on Pfiesteria, Maryland Gov. Parris N. Glendening likened the dead fish in the Pocomoke River to canaries in a mine. ''When the canary died, the miners knew to get out,'' said the governor.It was an appropriate analogy, with implications that go beyond the current problems associated with Pfiesteria. In the past several months, everyone in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, which covers 64,000 square miles from New York to Norfolk, has been reminded that the bay is in trouble.

In another blow for Maryland's beleaguered watermen, scientists say that the Chesapeake Bay's oysters are sick and dying again, less than a year after they seemed to be recovering from a seven-year bout with parasitic diseases.Spurred by the summer's drought, which made the bay's water much saltier than usual, the oyster diseases MSX and Dermo have returned with a vengeance.Oysters throughout the bay are infected with one or the other disease. Hardest hit is the lower bay, where MSX already has killed off more than half of the population, scientists say."

Dermo, one of two diseases that ravaged the Chesapeake Bay oyster population in the early 1990s, showed up in oyster bars throughout the bay during surveys last fall, according to state officials. But the oysters on those bars were surviving at greater rates than they did in 1992 and 1993, the years of the record-low harvests, suggesting they might be more resistant to the disease. "We can't say scientifically that that's the case," said John Surrick, spokesman for the state Department of Natural Resources.

Maryland's oysters, though ravaged by disease and loss of habitat, are showing some signs of resilience, state biologists reported yesterday. A survey last fall of Maryland's part of the Chesapeake Bay indicates that while most oysters are infected, fewer are dying from the parasitic diseases that have devastated them over the past 25 years, according to the Department of Natural Resources. "They're not out of the woods," said Chris Dungan, who tested the oysters for diseases at a joint state-federal laboratory in Oxford.