OYSTERS: Endangered Species Listing Is at Issue
When word spread in May that the National Marine Fisheries Service had initiated a "90-day finding" to determine if the Eastern oyster should be placed on the federal list of endangered species, oyster farmers, politicians, fishmongers, municipal hatcheries, and consumers of stew, Rockefeller, and half-shell oysters with lemon and a drop of Tabasco found the idea hard to swallow.
The Eastern oyster, Crassostrea virginica, has been a staple food, as well as a delicacy, since long before European settlers arrived. By 1880, oysters were the number-one fishery product in the United States. That year, 2.4 million bushels were harvested from the Chesapeake Bay alone.
On Long Island, the Eastern oyster was domesticated by companies, most prominently Long Island Oyster Farms, which leased bottomland in the Peconic Bays, Gardiner's Bay, and in Long Island Sound. A series of brown algae blooms that inundated East End waters beginning in the 1980s forced the company out of business.
During the 1950s, disease in the form of a protozoan parasite called MSX decimated the Chesapeake resource. Forty years later, another parasite known as dermo, or Perkinsus marinus, struck. As a result, the Chesapeake Bay oyster industry, once the largest in the country, has fallen on hard times. New York's oyster resource has fared better, but production of both natural population and farmed oysters has declined dramatically since the early 1980s, according to State Department of Environmental Conservation statistics.
Still, the resource is far from endangered, according to John Aldred, the director of the East Hampton Town Shellfish Hatchery and chairman of the Long Island Shellfish Managers Group. "The native oyster population in eastern Long Island is stable and has been for many decades," Mr. Aldred said in a letter, one of many, directed to the fisheries service.
The idea to list the Eastern oyster as endangered has been pushed by Wolf-Dieter N. Busch, an environmental consultant from Maryland who was formerly a scientist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Mr. Busch's petition states that an endangered listing is called for because the species has been endangered by habitat destruction, disease, and poor harvest management.
He is also seeking to halt the introduction of another, disease-resistant species, the Asian oyster, into the Chesapeake. Listing the Eastern oyster as endangered would, according to the Endangered Species Act, preclude the introduction of an exotic species.
New York's oyster industry has strongly objected to the listing because while vertebrates can be listed as endangered in specific areas, invertebrates like oysters, if listed as endangered in one area, such as Chesapeake Bay, must be considered endangered wherever they are found. State law mandates that the Eastern oyster is the only species that can be farmed in New York State.
Among those voicing their opposition to an endangered species listing is Representative Tim Bishop, who hosted a press conference at Twin Fork Oysters in Aquebogue on Saturday. He was joined by Phil Cardinale, the Riverhead Town supervisor, and Joe Gergela, the executive director of the Long Island Farm Bureau, which represents East End oyster growers.
Greg Rivara, a shellfish specialist with Cornell Cooperative Extension, said it was not clear how an endangered species listing would affect Long Island's oyster industry. At least 90 percent of the annual harvest comes from oyster farms, the largest being the Frank M. Flower and Sons company of Oyster Bay, which was founded in 1887. Each year, the East Hampton Town hatchery breeds and raises Eastern oysters that are placed in town waters for commercial as well as recreational harvesters.
"It could be a total 'Hands off them,' or it could do very little. Most people are worried that [farmers] would have to abandon a lot of research," Mr. Rivara said, adding that something similar happened when a breed of salmon was listed as endangered in Maine. The listing hurt certain salmon farmers.
The idea of protecting the native stock of Eastern oysters through an endangered species listing might well backfire, Mr. Rivara said, explaining that native oysters have been few and far between for years. He said that numbers of so-called "natural set" Eastern oysters were actually increased by way of spawn from farmed oysters that drift beyond the farms. Putting oyster farms out of business would decrease the population of Eastern oysters. "If listed, the draconian plan could actually mean fewer oysters here," Mr. Rivara said.
The National Marine Fisheries Service will accept comment on the proposed listing until January.