Oysters

A high-profile state task force is recommending that Maryland stop spending millions of dollars to plant oysters in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries only to let watermen harvest them. The 21-member Oyster Advisory Commission says the state should stop paying for such "managed reserves" over the next several years and instead help watermen learn how to raise oysters at their own expense for sale to restaurants and seafood businesses. "I just don't think the public is going to be willing to pay very much longer for a couple hundred guys to make some of their income harvesting oysters," William Eichbaum, chairman of the advisory commission and a vice president of the World Wildlife Fund, said yesterday.

When the waters are cold, when the snow falls, when skies turn oyster gray - that is when it is time to enjoy oysters. These conditions aligned recently, creating prime bivalve-eating opportunities. On a brisk, biting-cold Saturday afternoon, I hustled over to Lexington Market and warmed my innards with a creamy bowl of oyster stew at Faidley's Seafood. I bought two pints of shucked Chesapeake Bay oysters and carried them home. It was so cold, the jars did not have to be packed in ice; they stayed plenty chilly in the car trunk.

If this is June, what terrors does August hold?Indonesia had an election. Doesn't matter who won. They had an election.The grizzled come-backer, Andre Agassi, is living proof that you don't really have to be all washed up at 29.Crabs are down, oysters up. It just goes to show.Cheer up. The 106th Congress is back on the job.Pub Date: 6/09/99

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. -- Scientists have been sampling the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries to gauge the effects of Hurricane Floyd."There aren't massive signals screaming out: 'This was a catastrophic event,' " said Linda Schaffner, an associate professor in the department of biological sciences at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. Schaffner and her colleagues are looking at levels of salt, mud and nutrients in the wake of the Sept. 16 storm.Not enough or too muchNot enough of one or too much of the others can cause problems for bay and river creatures and for the watermen who depend on them for a living.

OysterFestOysters, a supposed aphrodisiac and "poor man's food," will be celebrated Saturday at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum's 12th annual OysterFest. Visitors will enjoy learning how to grow, nipper and tong oysters from the Waterman's Wharf and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. "Kids-town" will allow children to make oyster jewelry, hear stories and "tong" for prizes. Visitors may also explore the skipjack Rosie Parks and the bugeye Edna E. Lockwood or take a cruise on the museum's replica oyster buy-boat, Mister Jim. Food will be in abundance, too. Raw, fried and roasted oysters will be sold with beverages, accompanied by an Oyster Soup Cook-Off.

School cafeteria would be an eyesore in Roland ParkKathy Hudson's Opinion Commentary article citing Roland Park's renaissance as a result of "careful development, preservation and community vigilance" ("Roland Park's renaissance a lesson for city," June 8) seems prescient given community concerns over the proposed 42,000-square-foot, glass-walled science center and cafeteria building proposed by the Roland Park Country School.The architect has proposed a hulking design and factory-like cladding singularly inappropriate to one of America's oldest and most historic planned communities.

RECENTLY, I FOUND myself in a wood-paneled room in Washington in distinguished company.The setting was the Cabinet Room in the Old Ebbitt Grill, a restaurant around the corner from the White House. There weren't any Cabinet members present, but there was a Supreme Court judge, Antonin Scalia, and a well-known scribe, R. W. Apple Jr. of the New York Times.There was also a handful of members of the eating press, editors of publications such as Bon Appetit, Food Arts and Sante. But, in my view, the stars of the evening were the raw oysters and the 20 wines being served.

Maryland's watermen, whose oyster season begins today, are caught between the good news of a fast-growing oyster population and the bad news of the summer drought, weather perfect for diseases that kill oysters.The oysters produced in the near-record spat set of 1997 are reaching marketable size, and they are producing even more oysters, said Chris Judy, head of shellfish programs at the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. The saltier water in the Chesapeake Bay resulting from the lack of rain encouraged oyster reproduction.

Two years ago, Maryland officials put 14.5 million tiny oysters into mesh bags and hung them on lines in the Chesapeake Bay. Their aim: to see whether the state's disease-ravaged oyster industry could be revived using shellfish farming methods from New Zealand.This month, a few watermen will harvest perhaps 120,000 oysters remaining in those laboriously tended bags. Though they had planned to sell the crop, state officials now say it isn't worth the effort. They intend to dump the survivors into the bay."

"GIVE ME YOUR tired, your poor," has welcomed immigrants to this country for decades.Last week, at Northwest Middle School, seventh-graders got a closer look at the meaning of those words when the media center at the school was transformed into "Northwest Island," a simulation of the Ellis Island experience.The "immigrants" came to the island carrying newborn babies or mementos from home. They wore long fringed shawls, babushkas and black boots, or bathrobes and summer sandals to create the appearance of a newcomer to this country at the turn of the century.

One officer. That's what folks representing recreational anglers, charter boat captains and watermen all begged for Tuesday night from the head of Natural Resources Police. After years of watching outlaws of all persuasions steal fish and oysters from Maryland waterways only to see overworked prosecutors and distracted judges set them free (the bad guys, not the sea critters), members of the Task Force on Fisheries Management pleaded for help. "If you can't enforce the laws that protect natural resources, you can't manage the resource," said Brian Keehn, a charter boat captain.

A high-profile state task force is recommending that Maryland stop spending millions of dollars to plant oysters in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries only to let watermen harvest them. The 21-member Oyster Advisory Commission says the state should stop paying for such "managed reserves" over the next several years and instead help watermen learn how to raise oysters at their own expense for sale to restaurants and seafood businesses. "I just don't think the public is going to be willing to pay very much longer for a couple hundred guys to make some of their income harvesting oysters," William Eichbaum, chairman of the advisory commission and a vice president of the World Wildlife Fund, said yesterday.

Oysters make you amorous, or so the story goes. So as Valentine's Day approached, I went on the prowl for wines that embrace the bivalve. Like the lovelorn, I sought advice from those who had played this mating game. Executive chef Benjamin Erjavec reported that when some 200 diners paired oysters with wines at a recent mating event held at Oceanaire restaurant on Aliceanna Street, the crowd favorite was a French sauvignon blanc, Lalande. Meanwhile, a Baltimore wine merchant suggested the classic match of Muscadet and oysters.

ST. MICHAELS - The deck of the Caleb W. Jones gleams with a fresh coat of white paint, as does the new cabin aft. Down below, though, the 55-year-old skipjack is showing its age - and even some daylight. You can poke three fingers through a hole in its rotted wooden hull. Built in 1953, this remnant of the Chesapeake Bay's fading fleet of sail-powered oyster dredging boats is getting an extreme makeover at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. On dry ground for now, the Caleb's hull is being taken apart and put back together again, a timber and plank at a time.

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.

I notice on Juniors' Web site that the Federal Hill restaurant is now called a "gastro pub" rather than a "wine bar." It was always a suspect wine bar anyway, simply because it seemed to be more of a restaurant than "wine bar" suggests. (Not that "gastro pub" gives you any better idea of what Juniors is like. It suggests a pub that has upped the quality of its food, but there's nothing publike about the place.) In any case, the quality of the food isn't an issue at Juniors. Since Anthony Marini took over as executive concept chef - whatever that is - the food is imaginative and, for the most part, very good.

A waterman with a long list of convictions on the Eastern Shore for poaching fish, crabs and oysters from the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries is scheduled to stand trial tomorrow in St. Mary's County on charges that he harvested undersized oysters from the Patuxent River. The charges against Joseph Janda Jr. in October touched off a flurry of protests from recreational anglers to the prosecutor and calls by a Baltimore County lawmaker for tougher penalties on repeat offenders. Natural Resources Police say Janda, 22, of Wittman, was oystering without a commercial license when they stopped his boat on the Patuxent River across from Solomons to check his catch.

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.

A smoky wood fire sends a clear message that it's time to get serious about the season. I grew up in the city in the 1950s, when wood-burning fireplaces were not common. Coal furnaces, on the other hand, were around but disappearing fast. The 11th month brought its own aromatic reminders in the kitchen, too. November is Baltimore's first true cold month of the fall-winter calendar, and the chefs who kept me happy as a child ratcheted up their menus with enthusiasm. I think crabs have overtaken oysters in Baltimore's popularity race.