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Chesapeake Bay Foundation's vessel the Patricia Campbell, specially equipped for spewing oyster shells, delivers tons of oyster shells into the shallow water near the SERC dock.
Researcher Eric Johnson probes the shallows to gage the thickness of the new oyster shell bed.
RhoWeSo Oyster RestorationConsortium partners include SERC scientists and educators, Chesapeake Bay Foundation programs, NOAA scientists, Discovery Village, local watermen and local citizens of the Rhode, West and South Rivers. The citizen groups include the South River Federation and the West River citizens group including POWeR, the West/Rhode River RiverKeeper, the South River RiverKeeper, and the Chesapeake Environmental Protection Association. The watermen's group is the Southern Anne Arundel County Chapter of the Maryland Watermen's Association. We have also received oyster larvae from the UMCES Horn Point Laboratory hatchery, and we partner with the UMBI Center of Marine Biotechnology and with NOAA's Sarbanes Cooperative Oxford Lab for research on oyster disease.

New Oyster Reef for Education
and Research

On a warm sunny day in early May, the R.V. Patricia Campbell deliverd tons of oyster shells to a patch of the Rhode River right next to SERC's dock. The shells will form the base for the education department's oyster reef.

Oyster populations have declined dramatically in the Chesapeake Bay, but they play a very important ecological role. Oysters filter the water, aiding in water quality, and the reefs created by generations of oyster shells provide habitat for other organisms and protection from shoreline erosion in shallower waters. Scientists and conservationists are working to help restore oysters to the Bay and to teach people about their important ecological role in the Chesapeake.

SERC's new Oyster reef will serve both causes. As a demonstration reef, it will be a place where school children and visitors can learn about Oysters and visit a living, functioning oyster reef. Our researchers will also make use of the reef by conducting small-scale studies on oyster reef ecology that will compliment and add to the research being done in the field.

The next step will be to place shells with small live oysters, known as spat, on the reef. These spat will grow quickly into large oysters, forming a living oyster reef

Last year, SERC began working with the RhoWeSo Oyster Restoration Consortium to build experimental oyster reefs and study oysters both in the field and the lab. RhoWeSo stands for the Rhode River, West River, and South River where the consortium is based as a diverse array of partners that have come together for research, public education, and conservation to restore oysters in these three subestuaries of the Chesapeake Bay's western shore.

Last summer SERC set its first batch of oyster spat in our expanded Wet Laboratory. In the lab, with larvae from the University of Maryland's Horn Point lab, we settled out and grew approximately 2 million baby oysters, which we have used in a variety of experiments testing hatchery production and reef growth hypotheses.

SERC has planted spat out in the wild on oyster reefs leased by local watermen who are generously supporting the project. We have also surveyed all the oyster reefs of the three rivers for oyster abundance, size and disease prevalence.

Local property owners are also contributing to the consortium's efforts by farming oysters on their docks with guidance ans support from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. SERC has been helping with this process as well, and will be offering oyster gardening workshops in June through out public programs department.

We have also been training undergraduate Interns in oyster ecology and management issues in coordination with its blue crab stock enhancement program, providing opportunities to explore “polyculture” (culture and enhancement of more than one species in an ecosystem) to help restore the Bay's food web and fishery production.

With the focus and dedication of all those involved in the consortium, we hope to improve the chances for the revival of the Chesapeake Bay Oysters, and thus improve the quality of life in the Bay for all the Bay's native species and the people who enjoy them. Already we have seen change. Watermen have begun harvesting oysters in the Rhode River for the first time in more than 15 years.

 



 
 
 

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