Divers go deep to check up on oysters

ANNAPOLIS | One of the troubles with Chesapeake Bay oysters is that you just can’t see them.

Fish splash around and will bite on a good lure. It’s easy to chicken-neck for crabs.

But oysters - whether they are natural ones or planted for restoration - are at the bottom of rivers, far below in the often-murky water.

“It’s not like a garden, where you can see it grow,” said Chesapeake Bay Foundation scientist Stephanie Reynolds, who was part of an expedition on the Severn River last week to check up on some oyster restoration sites.

The team was composed of CBF employees and divers from the federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The team took CBF’s oyster restoration boat, the Patricia Campbell, to three sites on the Severn on Friday.

What the divers found was impressive: large, healthy, living oysters.

At each site, the divers went overboard and used a square frame made out of pipe to measure out a specific area. The square is one-third of a square meter, which is a little more than a square foot.

The divers picked up all the oysters within the frame, put them in mesh bags and handed them over to Ms. Reynolds and Karl Willey, captain of the Patricia Campbell.

Ms. Reynolds and Mr. Willey spread the oysters out on the ship’s deck and counted and measured them. This gave a general idea of the quantity and quality of the oysters on each reef.

“Twenty-four alive, eight dead,” Mr. Willey said to Ms. Reynolds, who was recording the information on a laptop computer.

“Nice,” she replied.

Oyster restoration is an evolving science, and monitoring data can help scientists know whether they’re on the right track with their restoration techniques.

The University of Maryland has estimated that when baby oysters - called “spat” - are planted in the Bay, usually about half of them die within the first year. But Mr. Willey said monitoring is showing that in the Severn at least, survival is somewhat better than 50 percent.

Last week’s monitoring also showed that oysters are doing well on a reef just off of Asquith Creek that was created with rubble from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge redecking project.

The Asquith Creek reef has been planted with oysters the past two years by the Bay Foundation and the nonprofit Oyster Recovery Partnership.

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