History of the Virginia Oyster Fishery, Chesapeake Bay, USA

Abstract

Oyster populations in Virginia's waters of Chesapeake Bay were lightly exploited until the early 1800s, when industrial fishery vessels first arrived, driven south from New England due to the collapse of northeastern oyster fisheries. Early signs of overexploitation and habitat degradation were evident by the 1850s. The public fishery, where oyster fishers harvest on state-owned bottom, rapidly developed after the Civil War and peaked in the early 1880s. Declines were noted by the late 1880s and eventually prompted the creation of Virginia's shell-planting and oyster-seed (young-of-the-year, YOY) moving repletion program in the 1920s. Despite management and increasing repletion efforts, the public fishery collapsed (annual landings <10% of peak historical landings) by the early 1960s. The private leasehold fishery, in which individuals rent areas outside the public grounds to plant shells and oysters for their own private use, surpassed the public fishery by the late 1920s, which partly masked this decline due to overfishing, habitat degradation, and diseases until both public and private fisheries completely collapsed in the mid-1980s after a third disease outbreak. This disease outbreak was likely related to warming waters. Overfishing and concomitant habitat loss followed a pattern of sequential population collapses observed in wild oyster fisheries along the Coastlines of the United States and worldwide. In recent years, expanding hatchery-produced seed oysters and aquaculture significantly increased leasehold landings. The wild fishery has also increased as disease resistance is developing naturally in the wild stocks, but remains ~5% of peak landings. Improved management has assisted in this recent limited recovery, improving these efforts further by enhancing stock recovery via large no-take sanctuaries, among other actions, could assist in stock recovery.

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published: 09 May 2017
doi: 10.3389/fmars.2017.00127
Frontiers in Marine Science | www.frontiersin.org 1May 2017 | Volume 4 | Article 127
Edited by:
Maria Lourdes D. Palomares,
FishBase Information and Research
Group, Philippines
Reviewed by:
Fabian Zimmermann,
Norwegian Institute of Marine
Research, Norway
Andrés M. Cisneros-Montemayor,
University of British Columbia, Canada
*Correspondence:
David M. Schulte
david.m.schulte@usace.army.mil
Specialty section:
This article was submitted to
Marine Fisheries, Aquaculture and
Living Resources,
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Received: 20 December 2016
Accepted: 18 April 2017
Published: 09 May 2017
Citation:
Schulte DM (2017) History of the
Virginia Oyster Fishery, Chesapeake
Bay, USA. Front. Mar. Sci. 4:127.
doi: 10.3389/fmars.2017.00127
History of the Virginia Oyster Fishery,
Chesapeake Bay, USA
David M. Schulte *
Department of Fisheries, College of William and Mary, Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Gloucester, VA, USA
Oyster populations in Virginia’s waters of Chesapeake Bay were lightly exploited until the
early 1800s, when industrial fishery vessels first arrived, driven south from New England
due to the collapse of northeastern oyster fisheries. Early signs of overexploitation and
habitat degradation were evident by the 1850s. The public fishery, where oyster fishers
harvest on state-owned bottom, rapidly developed after the Civil War and peaked in the
early 1880s. Declines were noted by the late 1880s and eventually prompted the creation
of Virginia’s shell-planting and oyster-seed (young-of-the-year, YOY) moving repletion
program in the 1920s. Despite management and increasing repletion efforts, the public
fishery collapsed (annual landings <10% of peak historical landings) by the early 1960s.
The private leasehold fishery, in which individuals rent areas outside the public grounds to
plant shells and oysters for their own private use, surpassed the public fishery by the late
1920s, which partly masked this decline due to overfishing, habitat degradation, and
diseases until both public and private fisheries completely collapsed in the mid-1980s
after a third disease outbreak. This disease outbreak was likely related to warming waters.
Overfishing and concomitant habitat loss followed a pattern of sequential population
collapses observed in wild oyster fisheries along the Coastlines of the United States and
worldwide. In recent years, expanding hatchery-produced seed oysters and aquaculture
significantly increased leasehold landings. The wild fishery has also increased as disease
resistance is developing naturally in the wild stocks, but remains ∼5% of peak landings.
Improved management has assisted in this recent limited recovery, improving these
efforts further by enhancing stock recovery via large no-take sanctuaries, among other
actions, could assist in stock recovery.
Keywords: oyster, history, fishery, Chesapeake Bay, virginia, Crassostrea virginica
BACKGROUND OF THE FISHERY AND MANAGEMENT FROM
PRE-COLONIAL TO PRESENT
Early Fishing (Pre-1600)
Native Americans settled in the Chesapeake Bay region, ∼9500 years BCE, during the glacial
retreat when the Chesapeake Bay as we would recognize it today began to form (Hobbs, 2004).
Oysters colonized the Bay ∼6500 years BCE as salt water from the Atlantic Ocean, driven by glacial
melting, penetrated up-bay, and up-river (Bratton et al., 2003). Reefs grew in elevation and area
while expanding upriver(s) and northward as salinity suitable to their survival increased in extent
(McCormick-Ray, 1998, 2005; Hargis and Haven, 1999; Smith et al., 2003; Hobbs, 2004).
Native Americans prior to European colonization were few in number relative to the human
population living in the Bay watershed today. Estimates of artisanal-level annual harvests from this
time period cannot be made. Where Native American settlements were near waters that contained
oyster reefs, shell middens consisting of oyster, mussel, and clam shells can often be found. Some

Schulte Virginia Oyster Fishery History
middens are sizeable, such as one along the shores of Pope’s
Creek, Virginia, which covers 12.1 ha (Wennersten, 1981) several
meters deep, indicating hundreds to thousands of years of
harvesting. At some middens, oyster shells decreased in average
size over time, indicating that the Native Americans’ sequential
harvesting of oysters could have negative impacts on the size-
frequency distributions of oysters (Kent, 1988; Jagani, 2011), as
observed in middens of other mollusk species (de Boer et al.,
2000), though no wide scale decline in size has been observed in
the Bay (Rick et al., 2016).
European Colonization and the Early
Oyster Fishery (1600s–Early 1864)
The first European settlers colonized Virginia in the early 1600s
on the northern bank of the lower James River, the largest
Virginia River, located near the confluence of the Bay and
Atlantic Ocean (Figure 1). Settlers at first collected oyster by
hand and/or using primitive tools from shallow, nearshore
reefs for food (Tyndall, 1608), similar to Native Americans.
Archeological data of colonial middens at Jamestown revealed
that a mix of local oysters as well as oysters from the mouth
of the James River had been collected for food, indicating
local populations may have been depleted by colonists (Harding
et al., 2008). The use of oyster shells for lime (CaO, used in
agriculture and construction mortar) began in the mid-1600s
and became more extensive (Bailey, 1938) as the colonial era in
Virginia progressed. There are records of reefs in the James River
providing shell for lime, with White Shoal, a reef that remains
part of the public fishery today, mentioned as early as 1638;
Native Americans middens were also used as a good source of
shells. Using shells for lime production continued throughout
FIGURE 1 | Overview of Chesapeake Bay, key Virginia oyster fishery
locations indicated.
the colonial period (Ford, 1891). Oyster shells, once shucked
of meat, were used in Virginia for road beds, agricultural lime,
chicken “grit” (a poultry feed supplement), mortar, a composite
form of concrete made of lime, sand, and crushed oyster shells
called “tabby,” and starting in the mid-1800s, railroad ballast
(Hargis and Haven, 1999). Impacts to oyster reefs by early settlers
appear to have been limited and local during the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries.
The first large-scale commercial fishing was by New England
oyster fishers that sailed south to the Chesapeake Bay and
began dredging subtidal reefs for oysters in the early 1800s after
depletion of their own beds (Kirby, 2004). Dredging continued
for several years and the total harvest and dredge-related damage
(Winslow, 1881, 1882; Lenihan and Peterson, 1998, 2004) to
what had been undisturbed sub-tidal oyster reefs is unknown.
Dredging was made illegal in Virginia in 1810, at which time the
New England dredgers simply sailed further north into Maryland
waters until they were banned there in 1820. These bans did not
entirely prevent dredging, due to lack of an organized marine
police at the time, as it was noted that New Englanders were
occasionally seen as late as the mid-1800s poaching oysters from
reefs near the mouth of the James River (Paxton, 1858). Dredging
for oysters would remain illegal for decades in Virginia and only
hand tongs, a simple tool consisting of two long-handled, hinged,
metal-toothed rakes developed in the late 1700s, were permitted.
In the 1850s, the Virginia oyster fishery expanded rapidly
(U.S Census, 1850, 1860; De Bow, 1858), concomitant with
rail lines that began to link centers of commerce throughout
the USA. Harvests increased (Figure 2) from 178,000 bushels
in 1849 to 2.3 million bushels in 1859 (1 bushel =0.049225
m3) (Auditor of Public Accounts, 1776–1928; U.S Census, 1850,
1860). Testimony (Paxton, 1858) suggests that this increase in
harvests occurred at a rapid pace: “The oyster trade may be
said to have sprung into existence in the last 10 years. Ten
years ago, but few persons living away from tidewater ever used
oysters. Now the country has been penetrated in every direction
by railways, and at this time oysters taken from our Virginia
waters are probably used more extensively in the towns and
villages of the far West, than they were a few years since in
Virginia within fifty miles of tidewater.” This increase appears
primarily due to growing regional, demand, enabled by more
effective means of shipping and preservation. The first large-
scale commercial canning operation for oysters, which allowed
for shipping oyster meat throughout the USA, began in Baltimore
in 1844 (Jarvis, 1988), which would soon become the center of
oyster canning in Chesapeake Bay (Maryland Bureau of Statistics
and Information, 1903)1. By 1858, about 4 million bushels
of oysters were being canned annually in Baltimore (Paxton,
1858), the majority processed being fished from Maryland waters
though Virginia oysters were also canned here. Small shipments
of Virginia oysters to various ports along the North East coast
occurred, early records indicate ∼100,000 bushels were being
shipped annually during 1846–1857 to Boston, though much
1https://www.google.com/search?biw=1167&bih=415&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:
%22Maryland.+Bureau+of+Statistics+and+Information%22&sa=X&ved=
0ahUKEwjZ38uTwsDTAhVI3mMKHUrzC34Q9AgISTAG
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Schulte Virginia Oyster Fishery History
FIGURE 2 | History of the oyster fishery, showing public, private, and seed harvests with repletion activity (shell and seed plants) over time. Data for
repletion 2003-14 are based on estimates from VMRC annual work plans. 1 bushel =0.049225 m3. Blue lines are years of disease epidemics, first line is the first
Dermo epidemic peak years, second line are the peak years of the MSX epidemic, third line is the second Dermo epidemic peak years.
smaller shipments had occurred previously, beginning in 1826,
to Boston and other northern cities, including New York City.
Smaller and younger sub-market sized (≤76 mm), often YOY
(young-of-the-year) oysters, called “seed” were also harvested
and sold, primarily to Northern States, for planting and grow
out to market size. Records indicate seed oysters from Virginia
waters were being shipped as far North as Connecticut as early
as 1830 (Goode, 1887) and even overseas (De Broca, 1865). It
is unknown how large this seed fishery was, though it may have
been comparable in size to the market oyster fishery by the 1850s.
With the advent of the Civil War in 1861, a naval blockade
was placed in Virginia waters. Harvests in Virginia declined as
local fishermen were often unable to fish during the war (1861–
1865). Oyster prices tripled in cities such as Alexandria, Virginia,
due to lack of supply (The Alexandria Gazette, 1963–1964). The
magnitude of the decline in oyster harvests due to the Civil
War remains unclear; the only reliable comparison was between
the 1859 harvest of 2.3 million bushels and the first post-war
harvest in 1965 at 2 million bushels (Figure 2). One source
(Brown, 1872) indicates that the harvest during the Civil War
may have increased due to harvest by northern dredgers, who,
upon payment of a permit fee, were able to dredge Virginia oyster
grounds while being protected by the Northern Navy. Virginian
watermen could also harvest upon payment of a fee, though few
did as many were at war or lacked the money to pay. These
dredging activities ceased after the War.
Major Peak of the Virginia Oyster Fishery
1865–1890
In 1860 county courts were authorized to appoint inspectors
of oysters to enforce oyster laws, which were first implemented
in 1866. A harvesting season for oysters was established, with
oyster fishing prohibited during the months of June–August
and limited during May and September to no more than 25
bushels/man/day. During other months, there were no harvest
limits. Various license fees and taxes were also established for
oyster harvesters and related processing activities. There was a
rapid expansion of the fishery from 1865 to 1871, which doubled
from 2 to 4 million bushels/year (Virginia Auditor of Public
Accounts, 1776–1928). The bushel tax was repealed in less than
a decade, so records of harvests became intermittent until the
1926–1927 harvest season when a bushel tax on harvested oysters
was reinstated Commission of Fisheries of Virginia (1907–1967).
There were two other significant changes in law during this
era. One was the codification of the private leasehold system,
providing legal protection to “planters” who had been active for
some time on a small scale, but who had little legal recourse
from pirating fishers tonging their plantings. These leaseholders
rented plots that they were given rights of ownership, upon which
to plant shells and seed for their own private benefit, permits
were granted by oyster inspectors who worked for the State.
The second was the permitting of dredges but limiting them
to waters over 6.1 m deep. Dredgers worked deeper, sometimes
unexplored waters, discovering, and exploiting the last pristine
oyster reefs of Tangier and Pocomoke Sounds in the mid-Bay
region near the Maryland border in the 1870s. A survey of oyster
reefs in the Tangier and Pocomoke Sound region (Winslow,
1882), describes the appearance of such reefs as follows: “These
reefs consisted of long, narrow oysters...no single oysters of
any (age) class, but all grew in clusters of 3–15. The shells
were clean and white, free from mud and sand. The mature
oysters were covered and the interstices between them filled
with younger oysters,” similar to the account made of shallower,
unexploited reefs: “In some banks their crowded condition may
be inferred from the fact that I counted as many as 40 (live adult)
Oysters in an area included by a quadrangle of wire including
exactly one square foot (0.0929 m2); 30 individuals to the square
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Schulte Virginia Oyster Fishery History
foot was a fair average on one bank examined (Ryder, 1884).”
Undisturbed oyster reefs appear to have had up to 320 adult
oysters/m2of varying sizes up to 23 cm (adults are classed
as oysters ≥35 mm), perhaps larger, and growing in dense,
cohesive aggregations that induced an elongate growth form.
This elongated architecture of oysters in dense aggregations was
a response to competition for space and food, and is similar to
adaptations of rain forest trees that compete similarly for light
(Poorter et al., 2003).
Little additional change occurred in the laws governing the
fishery until the outlawing of dredging of oysters on any public
oyster grounds in 1879. Virginia also eliminated its marine
police force (created in 1875) due to a perceived lack of need
of it, which resulted in pitched battles in many Virginia waters.
In the Rappahannock River, dredging boats began to illegally
harvest oysters openly during the winter of 1879–1880, using
rifle and cannon fire to discourage local hand tong fishermen
from fishing (Bulletin of the US Fish Commission, 1880). The
marine police force was quickly re-instated to restore order
and restore the ability of the state to collect taxes and fees
related to the oyster fishery, which had dropped precipitously
from $28,169 USD in 1871 ($501,770 in 2013 USD) to a mere
$541 USD in 1879 (10,373 in 2013 USD). Illegal harvest by
dredgers was estimated to be as high as 2 million bushels/year
when the marine police patrol was disbanded (Moore, 1982).
Conflicts between Maryland and Virginia oyster fishermen were
also commonplace, especially in disputed waters of Tangier and
Pocomoke Sounds and the Potomac River; these conflicts were
the “Oyster Wars” of Chesapeake Bay (Wennersten, 1981) which
at times grew intense enough to force the Governor of Virginia
(William Cameron 1882–1885) to intercede (Moore, 1982; Tice,
1982). Oyster harvests peaked in the Chesapeake Bay during
this era in 1880 at 6.3 million bushels of market oysters and
1.9 million bushels of “seed” oysters. Harvests remained high
at over 5 million bushels/year until the late 1880s, when the
first declines were observed. At this time (1890) total harvest
was split into public and private ground harvest (Figure 2). Seed
oysters were mostly planted (∼1.4 million bushels) in state on
private leased grounds. Seed during the great majority of the
productive years of the private leasehold fishery came primarily
from what came to be known as “seed beds” in the lower-salinity
reaches of the James River. This was a region of high oyster
recruitment due to favorable local hydrodynamics coupled with
a slow growth rate due to the low salinity. This situation created
a desire to move these oysters to enhance production coupled
with lots of young oysters available to move and fairly steady
rates of replacement, perfect for leaseholders. These reefs also
consisted of thick deposits of shells, rising several meters off
the bottom which could be harvested for many years before
being reduced to footprints (∼12 ha out of over 1,000 still have
limited relief from the bottom even today) (Woods et al., 2005).
The remainder, over 500,000 bushels, was shipped north where
it was planted in New York, Rhode Island, and Connecticut
waters, sustaining limited output in fisheries that had collapsed
due to overharvest and environmental degradation (Kirby, 2004).
Later shipments were smaller, being 100,000–150,000 bushels
by 1930 and declining thereafter until it virtually ceased in
1950 when legislation was passed that forbid shipment of seed
oysters outside the state unless seed demands of in-state oyster
planters were met. Due to these demands, shipments of Virginia
oyster seed to out-of-state planters became intermittent and quite
small (50,000–100,000 bushels/year) (Report of the Commission
of Fisheries of Virginia, 1907–1967; Alford, 1973; Mackenzie,
1996).
Varying Fishery Output Years 1887–1912
The first mention of public oyster ground depletion was by
Paxton (1858), whose interviews of prominent members of
the oyster industry and resulting testimony supported the first
legislative attempts to govern the oyster fishery. He described
depletion of oyster grounds in the York River and at the Hampton
Bars in the lower Bay near the Atlantic Ocean confluence, which
had been severely depleted and damaged by oyster dredging by
the 1850s. Additionally, large oyster grounds abutting Craney
Island, which lies at the confluence of the James and Elizabeth
Rivers, had been depleted. Similar damage was noted along the
Bayside of Virginia’s Eastern Shore region, in addition to the
depletion of large oyster beds in the Tangier/Pocomoke Sound
region. Oyster rock was, at the time, found as far South as
Cherrystone Creek near the mouth of the Bay but were so
depleted prior to the first official maps of the public oyster
grounds (Battle, 1892; Baylor, 1894, 1895) that the Cherrystone
Creek oyster rocks were not included.
The next warning was by Winslow (1882) during his survey
of oyster grounds in the James River and the Tangier/Pocomoke
Sound region of Virginia in the late 1870s. He noted that market
sized oysters were in far lower numbers than expected, finding
“one market sized oyster per three square yards of oyster reef,
on average.” At the time, Winslow noted that failure to enforce
oyster cull laws, which returned smaller than market sized oysters
and loose shell to the reefs was depleting the oyster beds. These
early warnings for Virginia, similar to those being given in
Maryland by scientists (Brooks, 1891), went unheeded. It is also
during this time that seed oyster harvest peaked at over 3 million
bushels/year in the 1890–91 and 1891–92 seasons.
The first significant declines occurred in the late 1880s
as harvests of market oysters dropped by several million
bushels/year, from the peak of over 6 million bushels in 1879
and 1880 to less than 4 million by 1889. By the 1890s harvests of
market oysters declined to less than 2 million bushels/year from
the public grounds and the private planters were contributing
much more to the overall harvest, which increased in acreage
from ∼8,000 ha in 1894 to over 24,000 ha by 1904. Private
leasehold harvests also increased, from ∼0.5 million bushels in
1890 to almost 3 million bushels in 1904. Thus, what should
have been viewed as a significant decline in public ground
harvest (over 50% in less than 25 years) was, outside of fishery
managers occasionally raising an alarm (Report of the Board of
Fisheries to the Governor of Virginia, 1900–1907), unnoticed.
Private leaseholds continue to expand, peaking at over 52,000
ha by 1960 (Report of the Commission of Fisheries of Virginia,
1907–1967). The private leasehold fishery essentially masked
the decline in public ground harvests as it surpassed them
in the early 1900s. This would remain the typical condition
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Schulte Virginia Oyster Fishery History
of the fishery, a smaller public and larger private component,
until the final decline and collapse of the fishery in the 1980s
(Haven et al., 1978;Virginia Marine Resources Commission,
1985–88;Hargis and Haven, 1999; Kellum, 2008). Maryland’s,
has a small private leasehold fishery due to political interference
by watermen (Kennedy and Breisch, 1983), public harvest have
always exceeded private harvests in northern Chesapeake Bay.
The private leasehold fishery was entirely (and to a significant
degree still is) dependent on wild oyster seed (Haven et al.,
1978; Bosch and Shabman, 1989), with a significant positive
correlation between the two evident from the time series. The
main weakness in this system was its reliance on wild oyster seed.
The leasehold system was for most of its history essentially a
livestock “finishing” operation where young oysters are moved
from wild reefs to privately owned grounds for fattening for
market. The relationship between harvested seed and private
leasehold production was positive, with a 1-year lag observable
between seed harvest and subsequent harvest from the private
leaseholds on which it was planted. Seed oysters typically take
an additional year to reach market size. Our analysis considered
1-, 2-, and 3-year lags between seed harvest and private lease
harvest, with the 1-year lag providing the best fit (r2=0.85,
Figure 3). This is in agreement with a study done at the time
(Report of the Virginia Fisheries Laboratory, 1953) that indicated
maximum yield of planted oysters was obtained 15 months post-
planting. Today, this system of planting and growing young
oysters on shelled leased ground is still extensively used, though
more modern aquaculture practices are being rapidly adopted by
leaseholders with significant success (Murray and Hudson, 2011).
The wild fishery experienced a partial recovery after the early
1890s, when harvest on the public grounds increased from 1.6
million bushels/year to nearly 3 million bushels/year from 1900
to 1904 (Report of the Board of Fisheries to the Governor of
Virginia, 1900–1907; McHugh and Bailey, 1957). The total oyster
harvest of 1904 (7.6 million bushels) nearly equaled the peak
of 1880 (Report of the Board of Fisheries to the Governor of
Virginia, 1900–1907).
FIGURE 3 | Sigmoid fit of public ground seed oyster harvest to private
leasehold harvest (units are VA bushels). 1 bushel =0.049225m3.
Harvests soon declined again, though unlike prior ones this
decline appeared to be driven by changes in the market rather
than a decline in fishery potential output, which suggests market
factors at this time played a significant role in oyster harvest
declines (Mackenzie, 1996, 2007). Consumers were concerned
about illness due to oyster consumption. This was known in the
oyster industry as the “Pure food” scare, which peaked during the
1907–1909 seasons and significantly reduced demand (McHugh
and Bailey, 1957). This scare was caused by outbreaks of typhoid
fever and other illnesses, some of which were linked to the
oyster industry, and resulted in the Pure Food Laws of 1906.
These linkages had merit; for example, the U.S. Surgeon General
documented that raw sewage was being dumped immediately
adjacent to oyster growing beds in Hampton, Virginia, and in
Chincoteague, which is part of the Seaside Eastern Shore of
Virginia and was, at the time, an important oyster producing area.
These oysters were being sold for human consumption (Annual
Report of the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service,
1915), some raw in the half-shell. The VA fish commission
observed: “as a result of the “panic” and pollution scare in 1906
a large proportion (at least 50%) of VA oyster carried over
(left unharvested) on the beds.” The Commission also noted
that oysters were making the transition in consumption from
a staple to a “semi-luxury” food item at this time (Report of
the Board of Fisheries to the Governor of Virginia, 1900–1907).
The temporary decline in demand caused several laws to be
passed in 1908 in Virginia, to restore public confidence (Report
of the Commission of Fisheries of Virginia, 1908–1912). Oyster
and clam harvesting was prohibited from polluted waters from
May 1st to August 15th and required that shellfish harvested in
season were to be placed for at least 7 days in waters certified
as unpolluted prior to be offered for sale as food. This process
of relaying oysters subject from contaminated to clean water,
called depuration, allows oysters to purge many contaminants,
biological and others, from their tissues given sufficient time
(Gardinali et al., 2004; Reboucas do Amaral et al., 2005; Nappier
et al., 2008). However, demand for oysters increased in the 1909–
1910 season, as the effects of the “panic” wore off and the largest
harvest recorded since 1904 was seen, indicating stocks may
have recovered during the years of lower demand. The oyster
industry was operating at near full capacity by 1910. This is the
only instance, other than during World War 1, where there is
evidence of market forces significantly depressing the Virginia
oyster harvest. Stock declines, concomitant overharvesting and
related habitat damage due to harvesting were the primary driver
for the decrease in local landings (Hargis and Haven, 1999;
Kirby, 2004), as imports of oyster meats and production in other
areas of the country rose as harvests in Chesapeake declined.
Additionally, locally, prices for oysters rose as harvests have
declined, indicating demand has been higher than supply since at
least 1970 (National Academy of Sciences, 2004) as well as the fact
that Virginia oyster processors had begun importing gulf oysters
since shortly after the MSX epidemic began (Murray and Kirkley,
2010), which formed the bulk of the oyster shucking done in
Virginia for decades until the Deep Horizon oil spill of 2010.
The “cull law” of 1910 was a measure implemented to
maintain the condition of the natural oyster habitat. Oystermen
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Schulte Virginia Oyster Fishery History
were to cull their catch over the reef from which it was taken
and were legally permitted to keep only those oysters exceeding
76 mm in shell length; all other materials, including shells and
undersize oysters, were to be returned to the reef. The exception
to this rule was the “seed beds” of the James River, which supplied
most of the “seed” oysters used by oyster planters throughout
the state. Harvests remained high (∼6 million bushels/year total,
about 1/3 of which were market sized oysters from the public
grounds) until World War I, which decreased both the demand
for oysters and numbers of fishers to catch them (Report of the
Commission of Fisheries of Virginia, 1945).
Soon after World War 1 ended in 1918, harvests on both
public and private grounds declined, with the total harvest
falling to 4 million bushels/year by 1920 and never recovering.
Production on the public grounds dropped below 2 million
bushels/year and fell below 1 million by 1929. Unlike prior
declines, this one was met with considerable alarm by fishing
industry managers and fishers. Conditions of the oyster rock were
described as follows (Report of the Commission of Fisheries of
Virginia, 1929): “A survey of the natural oyster rocks on the
ocean side of Accomac and Northampton Counties shows that
thousands of acres of oyster bottoms, as defined by the Baylor
Survey, have become entirely barren. On the bay side of the
above named counties the only natural rocks which can be called
productive area are a few of those lying in Pocomoke Sound. The
natural rocks in Virginia tributaries of the Potomac, including the
Yeocomico and Coan Rivers, have become depleted to such an
extent that, with a few exceptions, they may be said to be now
practically exhausted. The same conditions prevail in the Great
Wicomico and York Rivers, in Mobjack Bay and its tributaries,
and to a modified extent in the James River below the seed
line. Some of the rocks in the Rappahannock and Piankatank
Rivers are still comparatively productive, but many of the rocks in
these rivers have either become much smaller in area or are now
totally barren. These conditions easily explain the falling off in
the production of the natural rocks.” This decline was attributed
primarily to constant tonging and dredging without adequate
rest or replenishment of the public oyster grounds. A second
factor was oyster drills, Urosalpinx cinerea, a predatory snail on
young oysters, which caused 20–40% mortality on oyster recruits
(Report of the Commission of Fisheries of Virginia, 1926–1963,
Report of the Virginia Fisheries Laboratory Report, 1953). It is
unknown if the snails routinely caused this mortality rate, as this
is the first time it was measured, but it is likely they did.
Birth of the Repletion Program
To address the public fishery decline, the commission
recommended that a shell planting program to refurbish
the public grounds be initiated and funded at the level of
$100,000/year ($1.39 million in 2015 USD) with a goal of
planting at least 500,000 bushels (22,600 m3) of shells/year
on the public grounds in an attempt to halt the decline in
productivity. This repletion program began in 1929 with the
first shell plantings to attempt to maintain the habitat and seed
to more directly augment commercial harvest in specific areas.
Seed at this time came from areas of high recruitment, typically
the “seed beds” in the James River, the region of the James that
had already been providing the majority of the seed oysters
to private planters (Report of the Commission of Fisheries of
Virginia, 1929). During the first two decades, ∼276,000 (12,475
m3) bushels of shells and 15,000 (678 m3) bushels of seed were
planted/year. During these early years of the repletion program
(1931–1947) shell plants, with a 2-year lag to account for the
time needed for recruits on fresh shells to grow to market size,
did not have a statistically significant impact (ANOVA, p>0.05)
on the public oyster ground harvest (Figure 4). Seed plantings
during this time (1931–1947) were also analyzed with a 1-year
time lag being most appropriate considering seed generally took
1 full year post-planting to reach market size. No significant
impact (ANOVA, p>0.05) on the harvest due to these seed
plantings was observed. Seed plantings were also examined with
a 2-year lag and this was also not significant (ANOVA, p>0.05).
While it may have had some benefits, and perhaps did in slowing
the rate of stock decline, given the limitations of the available
data this impact is undetectable. Public ground oyster harvests
during this time (1929–1949) averaged 650,000 (29,380 m3)
bushels/year, roughly 10% of what it was during the peak years.
Harvests on the public grounds declined further during the
1950s by 9% to 596,000 (26,939 m3) bushels/year (Report of the
Commission of Fisheries of Virginia, 1947–1961). In response,
the repletion program was augmented in shell planting volume to
676,000 (30,555 m3) bushels of shells/year though seed plantings,
believed to not be of significant help, were halted (Report of the
Commission of Fisheries of Virginia, 1929–1949). State general
funds were used to supplement the repletion program funding
in 1947, which had prior to this point been funded solely by tax
and license fees on the oyster fishery (Commission of Fisheries of
Virginia, 1947). The general public therefore began to subsidize
the fishery, a 70-year subsidy which continues to this day.
Advent of Oyster Disease and Its Impact
on the Fishery and Repletion Program
In the late 1940s, oyster mortalities were being noted in adult
oysters that could not be attributed to predation. The cause was
identified as a fungus (actually a protistan parasite) that is now
known as Dermo, Perkinsus marinus (Report of the Virginia
Fisheries Laboratory, 1949–1959;Andrews, 1979). Estimates of
annual mortality during this time ranged from 10 to 30% of
oysters nearing market size in the summer prior to their fall
harvest (Report of the Virginia Fisheries Laboratory, 1959).
Perkinsus remains a problem to this day, becoming much more
severe in Chesapeake Bay in the 1980s (Burreson and Andrews,
1988; Ragone and Burreson, 1993; Burreson and Ragone-Calvo,
1996; Ragone Calvo et al., 2003; Wilberg et al., 2011), when
mortalities of adults due to Dermo were over 90% of age
2+adults/year in many areas of the Bay (Figure 2). Mortality
has since declined from this peak, but it remains a significant
impediment to oyster population recovery at present. Shell
plantings increased in volume in response to the increasing
mortality on market and near-market sized oysters. The benefit
of shell plantings occurred 2 years post planting, the time to grow
a single year class of oysters to market size on a shell planting
(ANOVA, p<0.05), though not at 3 or in later years (ANOVA,
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Schulte Virginia Oyster Fishery History
p>0.05). The amount of increased harvest was estimated using
the regression equation on the raw data of the era, to be a 41.8%
increase in commercial harvest due to the shell plants (time
period 1950–59, linear regression, r2=0.63), which was the
largest positive impact noted for the shell planting program. No
seed was planted on the public grounds during this time. The
volume of shells relative to the public ground harvest increased
significantly to achieve this benefit, with shell plants now
amounting to 105.1% of the volume of the commercial harvest,
compared to 35.8% by volume in earlier years. Another oyster
disease, MSX, Haplosporidium nelsoni, first noted in Delaware
Bay in the late 1950s, caused significant mortality to Virginia’s
oysters starting in 1959. Unlike Perkinsus, which appears to be a
native organism, Haplosporidium was introduced into Delaware
Bay via importations of non-native Pacific oysters, Crassostrea
gigas, from Japan (Burreson et al., 2000). The combined Dermo-
MSX epidemic caused massive oyster (primarily adults of sub-
market and market size) mortalities (90–95%) in high salinity
waters (>11 PSU) throughout much of Chesapeake Bay by 1960
(Andrews, 1964, 1968; Andrews and Wood, 1967; Andrews,
1979). Harvests peaked in 1960–61 as oyster fishers try to catch
as many oysters as possible before MSX killed them; plummeting
to 227,000 bushels in the 1962 harvest, the lowest ever seen on the
public grounds. The private leasehold fishery also declined with
the advent of MSX, production plummeting from ∼2,500,000
million bushels/year during the 1950s to less than 1 million
by 1967. Seed oyster production also declined from 2,300,000
million bushels/year during 1950–1960 to 1,150,000 million by
the early 1960s. As disease reduced stocks and drove down seed
counts per bushel, the price per seed oyster rose simultaneously
as seed quality declined due to increased mortality from disease
(Shabman and Capps, 1984; Bosch and Shabman, 1989). The
decline in spat counts per bushel after MSX was introduced to
Chesapeake Bay were most apparent in the James River, but
also occurred in other Virginia waters (Figure 4) (Burke, 2010).
James River seed oysters were particularly vulnerable to MSX
disease due to their origin in low salinity (6–10 PSU) waters,
which inhibit natural selection for disease tolerance as MSX
does not thrive in such waters (Ford, 1985). After the initial
MSX epidemic, oysters in high salinity waters developed some
tolerance to the disease (Ewart and Ford, 1993) which appears to
have become significant in recent years (Carnegie and Burreson,
2011) though low salinity populations remain naïve and subject
to significant mortalities if relocated to high-salinity waters.
The MSX disease epidemic of the 1960s initiated the first
of three waves of Federal economic subsidies to the Virginia
oyster industry. The response to the James River seed problem
was to develop two smaller rivers in higher salinity waters as
seed oyster sources for the private leasehold fishery, the Great
Wicomico and Piankatank Rivers, which began to receive large
scale shell plantings in the early 1960s as part of both state and
federal oyster disaster relief effort along the Northeast Coast
of the United States. The federal funds were used to support
research into disease resistant oysters as well as rehabilitation
of oyster beds via shell plantings and through seed purchase
and movement (Report 1736, 87th Congress, 1962). This larger
scale shell planting effort also involved adding shells obtained
by dredging buried shell deposits from local waters to shells
bought from shucking houses,. During the peak of the shell
planting program in Virginia (1963–1968) 2,600,000 bushels
(117,520 m3) of shells were planted/year. The oyster seed planting
program was also re-initiated at this time (1961) in response to
the MSX epidemic, to move oysters from high salinity regions
where they recruit in good numbers to low salinity areas where
MSX mortalities were lower and survival of planted seed to
market size (76 mm) more likely. In prior years when seed was
moved onto public grounds (1931–1946) an average of 18,700
bushels (845 m3)/year were moved. From 1962 to 1972, 73,400
bushels of seed oysters were moved, which amounts to 21.5%
by volume of the commercial harvest from the public oyster
grounds. Considering that planted seed can potentially produce
over a bushel of market oysters per bushel planted depending on
survival and growth rates, this seed movement could have made a
significant contribution to the commercial oyster harvest during
the peak years of the MSX epidemic (Report of the Commission
of Fisheries of Virginia, 1931–1965).
Post MSX Period (1964–1980)
The large scale shell plantings and seed movement may have
exerted a positive effect on the public oyster fishery as harvests,
despite ongoing though declining but still significant MSX
mortality (Andrews, 1968), which appears to have peaked during
the early 1960s (Mackenzie, 1996). However, statistical analysis
indicates there was no clear relationship between shell or seed
plantings and the public oyster harvest with the exception noted
(1950–59). ANOVAs on harvest vs. repletion program (with a 2
year stagger for shell plants and a 1 year stagger for seed plants)
from the entire time of the repletion program (1931–2009), and
various eras selected for times of more intense shell and/or
seed plants after the MSX epidemic: 1960–1985, 1991–2009,
2000–2009, 2005–2009, 1960–1969, 1960–1971, and 1963–1966
revealed no significant relationships, p>0.05). Shell plants and
seed plants were factors, considered independent of each other
as well as interactively using R software, as were all subsequent
ANOVA of various time periods, with harvest as the dependent
variable. Harvests from the public oyster rocks vary considerably
during this time, from a low of 228,000 bushels in 1962 to just
over 600,000 bushels by 1965. Harvests decline again (>300,000
bushels/year) from 1967 until after Tropical Storm Agnes in 1972
(Report of the Commission of Fisheries of Virginia, 1907–1980).
Tropical Storm Agnes had a significant negative impact on the
oyster industry, but it also exerted a positive impact by virtually
extirpating the predatory oyster drill from much of Chesapeake
Bay, particularly the Rappahannock, Piankatank, and Great
Wicomico Rivers, and severely depleting them in the York and
James Rivers (Lynch, 2005), allowing for greater survival of
young oysters. The heavy freshwater flooding caused by Agnes
also inhibited seed oyster production due to the very poor
recruitment on seed beds. Mortality due to the storm on private
leaseholds (Report of the Commission of Fisheries of Virginia,
1907–1980) was much higher than on natural reefs. The public
ground harvest stayed steady while the private ground harvest
plummeted to ∼33% of the prior year’s harvest. The private
leasehold fishery did not recover and production remained <50%
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Schulte Virginia Oyster Fishery History
FIGURE 4 | Mean spatfall over time in various Virginia tributary rivers over time. (A) Great Wicomico River, (B) Piankatank River, (C) Mobjack Bay, and
(D) James River.
of the decade before. Federal disaster relief funding resulted
in massive shell plantings for several years, rapidly increasing
after 1972 to a peak of over 3,000,000 bushels (135,600 m3)
of shells planted in 1975 and 1976. Harvests increased from
260,000 in 1972 to over 700,000 bushels of oysters in the 1979–
80 harvest seasons. This peak was the highest since 1961, and the
last significant peak in production for the public oyster fishery
(Report of the Commission of Fisheries of Virginia, 1907–1980).
Final Decline and Collapse with Recent
Signs of Recovery (1981–Present)
Seed movement, which had increased to over 100,000 bushels
a year in the early to mid-1970s, was reduced to less than
50,000 bushels/year from 1975 to 1986. Large scale shell plantings
on public grounds also declined from over 3,000,000 bushels
(135,600 m3)/year in the mid-1970s to less than half that total in
the following decade [∼1,400,000 bushels (63,280 m3) shells/year
from 1977 to 1986]. Harvests from the public grounds declined
along with the shell plantings, falling over 50% from 1980 to
1984. The years 1985–86 were very dry and hot, especially
during the time when oysters and their diseases are metabolically
active, permitting Perkinsus to overwinter at high prevalence. In
typical years reduced winter salinity and temperatures promote
reductions in disease prevalence and intensity (including MSX).
This allowed for an expansion and increased virulence of
Dermo throughout most of the Chesapeake Bay causing massive
mortalities of adult oysters (Andrews, 1996) in almost all Virginia
waters. MSX also played a role in increasing disease mortalities at
this time, especially in Maryland, though Dermo was the primary
source of disease mortality during this epidemic. As stocks of
market sized oysters declined precipitously in almost all Virginia
waters, the situation for the oyster industry grew dire. The result
was the unprecedented move by fishery managers to open the
James River seed beds to harvest for market oysters in 1986.
Another action was to allow hand scrapes, which are small oyster
dredges, for use in the oyster fishery and the opening up of
many regions to their use in 1987 in an attempt to maintain
harvests (Virginia Marine Resources Commission 1986–1987).
Dredges, pulled over a wide area of reef, catch more oysters
per unit time than tongs when oyster densities are low. These
management measures enhanced harvests for several years before
populations were depleted. It was believed that as disease would
soon kill the oysters, it was best to attempt to harvest them. The
James River seed beds were managed over much of their former
area for market oyster production. Shell and seed plantings to
maintain the public grounds continued, shell plantings averaged
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Schulte Virginia Oyster Fishery History
∼1,500,000 bushels (67,800 m3)/year planted and 80,000 bushels
(3,616 m3) of seed/year planted from 1981 to 1990 (Virginia
Marine Resources Commission, 1981–1990,Hargis and Haven,
1999). Public ground harvests during this time average 322,000
bushels of oysters/year, steadily declining during this time from
475,000 in 1981 to 178,000 in 1990, a 73% drop, and now at 3% of
the historic peak. The Dermo outbreak also impacted the private
leasehold fishery, which declined from 300,000 bushels/year
from 1980–1986 to less than 100,000 by 1990. The state cut its
public oyster repletion program drastically (by 81%) in 1991,
and remained low until very recently (2013) when much more
substantial state funding ($2 M USD) was provided to allow
the repletion program to expand again. The Federal government
began providing funds in the 1990s. These funds exceeded
state funding for a significant period of time (Virginia Marine
Resources Commission, 1993–2010) decreasing after 2010. From
1993 to 2011, on average nearly 767,000 bushels (34,668 m3)
of shells have been planted/year on public oyster grounds to
maintain the fishery, along with an average of nearly 30,000
bushels (1,356 m3) of seed oysters (wild and in recent years some
hatchery produced) planted annually on these same grounds.
At the same time, oyster harvests on the public grounds have
been very low, 42,426 bushels/year on average. These repletion
numbers do not consider reefs constructed as sanctuaries, which
are closed to oyster harvesting, or any oysters planted on these
sanctuaries. If these were included, both shell and seed figures
would be much higher (Virginia Marine Resources Commission,
1986–2011). Public oyster harvests declined further, recording
harvests of less than 10,000 bushels for several years in the 1990s,
2001 and 2006. The only harvest exceeding 100,000 bushels
occurred in 2005 when a large sanctuary established in the James
River in the 1990’s was opened to commercial oyster harvest
(Daily Press, 2005). This sanctuary supplied the majority of the
2005 public harvest total of nearly 100,000 bushels. Another large
sanctuary in the lower Rappahannock River that had been closed
to commercial oyster harvest in 1993 was opened to harvest
in 2007, enhancing harvest that year, though. Public ground
harvests remained lower than 100,000 bushels/year until recently
(post 2010). Further management actions taken at the time of the
Rappahannock River sanctuary opening included establishment
of a rotational harvest system in the lower Rappahannock River
and in the Tangier/Pocomoke Sound region, dividing them up
into regions so that individual public grounds are rested for a year
between harvests and also to better coordinate repletion activities
to maximize commercial harvest (Virginia Marine Resources
Commission, 1986–2007). It is believed that this allows for higher
stock and harvest levels. It is unknown at this time if this
management is having this affect, as there has been developing
disease resistance, which has also enabled higher harvests post
2010. Rotational harvest has been used successfully for molluscan
species, including sea scallops (Valderrama et al., 2007). Due to
the present lack of wild seed resistant to disease, there has been a
significant increase in production of oyster seed from hatcheries
for aquaculture, either on the bottom or in more managed
cage and rack systems (Murray and Hudson, 2011), this trend
continues at present. In recent years, hatchery produced seed has
significantly augmented the private leasehold productivity, which
has out-produced the wild oyster fishery in terms of bushels of
market oysters produced/year since 2006 with this gap widening
significantly in the past several years. This increase has been
primarily due to the development of hatchery produced seed, not
increased wild seed production, though wild seed production has
increased in recent years as well.
In Virginia, three formerly productive oyster beds of varying
size at the confluence of the Nansemond, Elizabeth, and James
Rivers (1037.4 ha) and in Tangier Sound (284.6 and 479.4 ha)
were permitted for dredging of buried shells that formed the
footprint of these large historical reefs. They were denuded of
live oysters and surface shell by years of overfishing and covered
by ∼0.6 m of sediment as of 1960 (Withington, 1965). The largest
site had been depleted by 1850 (Paxton, 1858) and the two smaller
sites by the 1870s (Winslow, 1882). This dredging of former
reef footprints commenced in Virginia in 1963 and continues at
present. The three initial sites, which contained unconsolidated
deposits of shells up to 4 m thick served for many years of
shell dredging (Withington, 1965). These initial three sites were
eventually depleted and are no longer used today. Several small
sites in the lower James River totaling ∼114 ha are permitted
for use at this time. The majority of shells planted in Virginia
waters in recent years have been dredged shells, with shucking
house shells comprising a smaller portion [∼500,000 bushels
(22,600 m3)/year]. Most of this shucking house shell was not
derived from local harvests but from imported shell stock from
the Gulf of Mexico, as the few remaining (161 in 1981, 36 in
2009) oyster shucking and packing houses in Virginia primarily
imported and processed live oysters from the Gulf of Mexico until
the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 impacted a significant
part of the gulf oyster fishery, causing a wide-scale closure of most
of it (Sumaila et al., 2012) and the increasing local harvests in
recent years.
Shell Placement
Shells were generally placed to sustain the commercial harvest by
repairing damaged habitat. However, there have been significant
exceptions. At the commencement of the shell planting program
in the late 1920s, a number of experimental shell plantings were
conducted to assess the benefits of expanding oyster habitat. The
results when compared to planting shells on existing, damaged
and depleted habitat were poor. State fishery management
developed a position in 1931 (Report of the Commission of
Fisheries of Virginia, 1931) as follows: “The planting of shells on
barren grounds, and then closing the areas on which they are
planted until there is a sufficient catch of oysters of marketable
size, as the statute now provides, will not, in the opinion of the
Commission, produce satisfactory results for the reasons, that
there is frequently a failure to obtain a catch of young oysters
on such grounds, and when they are once thrown open to the
public, the repleted areas soon become as barren as they were
before the shells were planted. Furthermore, the cost of restoring
the natural rocks on barren bottoms in Virginia would be too
great to be considered. On the other hand with shells planted on
the live, productive rocks, and the cull law enforced, there is not
only a better chance to obtain a catch of young oysters on the
shells year by year, but they would afford a continual means of
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Schulte Virginia Oyster Fishery History
production.” However, accuracy of shell placement was limited
by navigational technology to locate accurately the bed to be
planted, as well as the means to place the shells (typically a water
cannon of the type used on marine fire control vessels was used
to blow shells off a barge) as well as currents which can displace
shells as they settle to the bottom. This had been noted as early
as 1950, when the Virginia Fisheries Laboratory “recommends an
annual survey of the public oyster rocks in order to determine
more accurately the location in which shells should be planted
for cultch purposes (Report of the Virginia Fisheries Laboratory,
1949–1959).” Extensive experimental plantings outside typical
repletion done on natural oyster rock habitat commenced with
the influx of Federal funding in the 1960s that was allocated
to Virginia in response to the MSX disease epidemic. However,
it remained state fishery management policy to spend the bulk
of the repletion efforts on areas of known productivity: “It
is our intention to continue planting the largest quantity of
shells in the tried and tested areas although we expect to make
experimental plantings in other rivers where we hope to get
enough recruitment to further advance the program” (Report
of the Commission of Fisheries of Virginia, 1964–1965). These
experimental plantings continued to be part of the repletion
program for several years, throughout the late 1960s. They
evidently continue to some extent to the present time, as in the
Rappahannock River and Tangier/Pocomoke Sound which show
that portions of recent repletion projects (year 2000 and more
recent) have included significant shell plantings on new areas
rather than on natural oyster rock (Figures 5–7).
Oyster Fishers
The total number of fishers is considered, and fishermen types
are often grouped for the analysis as harvest data by gear type
is limited. Two main distinctions in gear type define the type
of fisher: tongs, which are large metal-toothed rakes that are
worked by hand or hydraulically, and dredges, which are metal-
toothed frames with an attached bag that are pulled over the
bottom by the boat. Tongs take a discrete, small area of reef per
deployment whereas dredges are dragged over an area of reef per
deployment. Dredges are more efficient oyster harvest gear both
in deeper waters and lower market oyster densities (Tarnowski,
2004). Dredges are more damaging to the reef structure than
are tongs, and additionally, over time, spread the remaining reef
material over a wider area, expanding it while reducing reef
quality (Winslow, 1881; Moore, 1910; Lenihan and Peterson,
1998, 2004). Tongers (hand and patent) dominate the fishing
license holders numerically with few exceptions; 1989 and 2004-
present, when dredgers dominate. Legislative protection has
been provided to tongers throughout the history of the fishery,
reserving large areas, typically in rivers and shallower waters, for
their exclusive use. This permitted larger numbers of watermen
to remain in the fishery at the expense of individual income. This
recent dominance by dredgers is largely due to the permitted
use of smaller dredges, called “hand scrapes” into the oyster
fishery in the late 1980s over much of Virginia’s public oyster
grounds. Prior to the Dermo epidemic, dredgers constituted 10%
or less of the total fishers in Virginia. Maryland reacted similarly
to the Dermo disease epidemic, opening up wider and wider
areas to oyster dredging as oyster populations collapsed in an
attempt to sustain harvests (Tarnowski, 2004). This management
action resulted in more rapid and complete population collapse
in Maryland. Further, the Dermo induced collapse may have
been avoided had fishing mortality been decreased (Rothschild
et al., 1994; Jordan and Coakley, 2004) and though this has
not been extensively studied in Virginia, it is likely true for
the Virginia oyster population as well. For example, in 1978,
dredging was declared legal during a short, designated late winter
season each year in open waters of Tangier and Pocomoke Sound,
Virginia. As a result, landings increased to 208,130 bushels for
Pocomoke and Tangier Sounds combined during the 1978–79
season, but this level of production quickly declined to only
27,370 bushels in Pocomoke and Tangier Sounds by the 1983–84
harvest season. The data, and the Maryland experience suggest
the accumulated stocks were quickly exhausted by the more
efficient (and damaging) dredging over tonging during the height
of the Dermo epidemic (Virginia Marine Resources Commission,
1978–2011).
As harvests declined fishermen exited the fishery (Figure 8)
until stabilizing after the final collapse (1993–2011) at a mean
of 481 watermen per year holding active licenses to harvest
oysters from the public grounds. Income per license holder
also varies considerably (Figure 8), and a recent trend toward
higher income/fisher can be seen, beginning around 2004. This
has been attracting more fishers back into the oyster fishery,
with 594 in 2008, increasing to 908 licensed fishers as of the
start of the 2011 season. Due to the fact that all licensed
fishermen are grouped, the income/license is not truly reflective
of the average income/fisher. Dredgers harvest proportionally
more oysters/license than do tongers, though their capital outlay
is typically higher. Additionally, dredgers typically operate on
larger boats with a crew of two (hand scrape fishers) or more,
whereas tongers tend to operate with a crew of one (just the
license holder) or with a single helper. During the earlier history
of the fishery, crew often consisted of unpaid young (<18 year
old) sons of adult watermen, forced conscripts (typically recent
European immigrants), who were paid poorly if at all (Keiner,
2009), to today’s crews where the boat owner will be paid the most
with smaller amounts to various crew members, if present.
What can be seen over time is a general downward trend
in gross income (adjusted to 2011 dollars) per license-holder
over time coupled with a decline in license-holders over
time (Figure 8). This trend is accompanied by a transition
from oyster fishing as providing near full-time occupation to
seasonal employment. The early years of the fishery (1880–
1928) saw the average license-holder earn $12,277 USD (inflation
adjusted for 2011). For the era, this was a below average
income (average income from 1913 to 1928 was $16,098
USD in inflation adjusted 2011 dollars (Piketty and Saez,
2003), illustrative of the low income typical of a commercial
fishermen in the Bay that continues to this day. For example,
at Tangier Island, Virginia, a small, isolated community
whose workers largely derive their income from commercial
fishing, had a median household income of $28,384 USD in
2011, compared to the US median of $49,445 USD in 2011
(Lebergott, 2017). Today, the oyster fishery provides limited
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FIGURE 5 | Shell placement in the Rappahanock River, early 2000’s. Note a large portion of the shells were not placed on the highest quality “oyster rock”
bottom areas.
FIGURE 6 | Shell placement in TangierSound, 2002. Note a large portion of the shells were not placed on the highest quality “oyster rock” bottom areas.
seasonal employment to a small number of fishermen, who
rely on more destructive fishing practices (dredges) than earlier
times, to maintain the small public ground harvests seen
today.
Extent of Oyster Habitat and Loss Over
Time
The total area originally delimited in Virginia waters of
Chesapeake Bay as public oyster grounds was 81,429 ha, with
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Schulte Virginia Oyster Fishery History
FIGURE 7 | Shell placement in Pocomoke Sound, 2002. Note a large portion of the shells were not placed on the highest quality “oyster rock” bottom areas.
FIGURE 8 | Number of fishers and gross income over time. Embedded graph is a sigmoid fit of the data, y =12723.3/(1 +e-((x–3623.0)/2717.7), r2=0.43.
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Schulte Virginia Oyster Fishery History
18,046 ha of these on the seaside of the Eastern Shore of Virginia
(Baylor, 1895). Baylor mapped the beds based solely on the input
of the county oyster inspectors, who served as his guides, without
any ground truth examinations of the bottom.
This means of delineation resulted in numerous discrepancies
between where oyster reefs were actually located and the mapped
public grounds, with some reef areas kept out and barren areas
included. Perhaps the largest discrepancy was that one entire
region, much of the lower Bayside Eastern Shore, was not
surveyed by Baylor due to the prior decimation of the reefs in
this region (Paxton, 1858). In the Lynnhaven River, Baylor was
prohibited by the oyster inspectors from surveying much of the
Eastern and Western Branches of the River, due to the inspectors’
desire to keep such areas out of the public oyster fishery (Baylor,
1893).
The result of the Baylor survey was a series of polygon maps
that can serve as a crude guide of the locations and areal extent
of oyster grounds, with extensive reef areas excluded in some
cases and barren areas that were not oyster habitat included
within them. A schematic of the Baylor Survey vs. an older
survey (Winslow, 1882) that was subject to a meticulous bottom
survey to determine the extent and quality of oyster habitat
within the same area, the Tangier/Pocomoke Sound region of
mid Chesapeake Bay, shows significant discrepancies (Figure 9).
Areas that were undoubtedly oyster habitat were excluded from
the survey, based on the borders of a number of oyster reefs that
clearly extend off of the Baylor Grounds, and areas that clearly
were not oyster habitat were included within the Baylor polygons.
To further confound the issue, these surveys (both Winslow,
1882, and Baylor, 1895) were conducted after decades of dredging
and it is likely that reef habitat was already lost by this time. Areas
covered by ground-truth surveys include the Tangier/Pocomoke
Sound region of the Bay main stem (Winslow, 1882), the upper
western shore of Virginia waters of Chesapeake Bay (Bradford,
1881), Onancock and Pungoteague Creeks (Bradford, 1881), and
the James River (Moore, 1910).
Tonging and dredging damage reefs and can reduce their
areal extent as well as reef height (Winslow, 1881; Wennersten,
1981; DeAlteris, 1988; Lenihan and Peterson, 1998; Hargis and
Haven, 1999). As an example of tonging impacts, the Moore
(1910) survey delineated 2852 ha of high-quality oyster reef
habitat (oyster rock) in the James River. Such habitat consists
of mostly live and dead oysters and shell, with minimal if
any exposed sediments of other types on the reef surface.
A more recent survey (Haven et al., 1981) delineated 1,744
ha of oyster rock habitat in the same river, a 38.9% loss
largely between 1906 and 1979 (71 years), for an annual
loss rate of 0.55%/year (Figure 10) due primarily to tonging
though sedimentation plays a role by covering depleted beds
(Lenihan, 1999), rendering them useless for oyster recruitment.
For an example of dredging impacts, Winslow (1882) surveyed
the Tangier/Pocomoke area of the Bay main stem. At the
time of his survey, there were 2,252 ha of oyster rock
habitat in Virginia waters. The Haven et al. (1981) survey
documented 630 ha of oyster rock remaining, a 72% loss
over the period 1878–1979 (101 years) for an annual rate of
0.71%/year (Figure 9). A creek in this region, Pungoteague
Creek, also illustrates this damage and resultant habitat loss
(Figure 11).
Repletion rates were different between the two regions
(Reports of the Commission of Fisheries of Virginia 1929–1967;
Annual Reports of the Marine Resources Commission, 1968–
1978), with the James River oyster rock receiving, on average,
89.7 m3of planted shells/ha and Tangier/Pocomoke Sound oyster
rock receiving, on average, less at 50.5 3/ha since the inception
of the repletion program to 1978 (the year before the Haven
survey was conducted) compared to the original surveyed rock
areas. Plantings often occurred in the same areas known to be
particularly productive or due to political pressures, so these
averages are not truly reflective of what actually occurred—some
areas were preferentially maintained, while others may never
have had any shell planted. The higher rate of repletion in the
James River may have slowed its rate of areal shrinkage compared
to the Tangier/Pocomoke region, which may explain the lower
rate of habitat loss, though it is more likely due to a combination
of higher initial relief of the James River reefs compared to
those in Tangier/Pocomoke Sound as well-differences in fishing
devices. Overall, these rates of habitat loss are comparable to
those estimated for the Maryland portion of Chesapeake Bay’s
oyster habitat (Rothschild et al., 1994; Smith et al., 2005).
It is also probable that new habitat was formed by the
extensive dredging of the reefs, which spread shells over a wider
area than the original pre-exploitation reefs covered. Winslow
(1882) and Ingersoll (1881) indicated that this was the case.
Modern experiments (Lenihan, 1999; Lenihan and Peterson,
2004) demonstrated that oyster dredges spread reef material
over a wider area when run over reefs with significant bottom
relief, as most early reefs did (DeAlteris, 1988; Woods et al.,
2004) in Virginia waters of the Bay. The “scattered” areas in the
Winslow survey (1881, 1882) were, in part, new habitat formed
by spreading of shells from the original reefs.
DISCUSSION
The public oyster fishery follows the typical pattern of depletion
seen for most oyster fisheries worldwide (Kirby, 2004; Beck et al.,
2011). Today, the remaining oyster habitat in Virginia waters in
the Bay is in generally poor condition and stocks are low. The
fishery is defined as collapsed (Worm et al., 2006; Costello et al.,
2008), as both public and the linked private leasehold fishery
returns are much less than 10% of peak landings (0.5% for the
public fishery and 0.8% for the private leasehold fishery since the
early 1990’s. Most of this loss can be attributed to overfishing
compounded in later years by disease (Haven et al., 1978; Hargis
and Haven, 1999; Kirby, 2004; Beck et al., 2011), coupled with
inadequate stock management during disease epidemics (Jordan
and Coakley, 2004). It is possible that diseases increased as stock
declined due to allee effects, which have been implicated in
fishery collapses, including molluscan fisheries (Gascoigne and
Lipcius, 2004) but this has not been confirmed for Chesapeake
Bay oysters.
The oyster repletion program, a put-and-take fishery subsidy,
operated in the early years with little impact, though it likely
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FIGURE 9 | Map showing Baylor (1895) grounds (polygon outlines), Winslow (1882) survey (medium grey =Winslow oyster rock, very pale grey =
Winslow shell and sand, and Haven et al. (1981) survey (black =Modern oyster rock, dark grey =Modern shell and sand, bright white polygons are
where modern (post 2000) shell plantings have been constructed) of Tangier and Pocomoke Sound waters, VA.
FIGURE 10 | Habitat loss between Moore Survey (1910, gray areas) and Haven et al. Survey (1981, black areas) in the James River.
played a role in sustaining harvests and slowing the rate of the
collapse of the public fishery. When the shell-planting program
was sufficiently large, a positive benefit of increased harvests on
public oyster grounds was observed. Overall, repletion efforts
in Virginia increased exponentially over time with increasingly
larger efforts (and associated expenditures) needed per bushel
of market oysters harvested from the public oyster grounds
after each disease outbreak. The dredged shells used for the
majority of the shell plantings since the early 1960’s currently cost
$2.00/bushel (this price continues to rise) and oyster seed used
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FIGURE 11 | Pungoteague Creek on Bayside Eastern Shore of Chesapeake Bay, showing loss of oyster habitat between 1881 (red areas) and 1981
(blue areas).
for seed plantings costs from $6–30/bushel with the cheaper seed
being produced on public oyster grounds and more expensive
varieties produced on private leaseholds ($12 USD/bushel) or
hatchery produced ($15–30 USD/bushel). The price of hatchery
produced seed is falling and will likely continue to fall as hatchery
capacity and technology is further developed in the Virginia
region of the Bay. These repletion efforts in Chesapeake Bay
have been analyzed in both Maryland (Cabraal and Wheaton,
1981; Herberich, 2006; Wieland, 2007) and Virginia (Santopietro
et al., 2009) from an economic perspective and returns in recent
decades for these subsidies have not been positive. This could
change if the public ground harvest continues to increase, prices
per bushel hold steady or decrease, and the price of shell remains
modest compared to a similar volume of harvested live oysters.
The story of this fishery and associated disease impacts in
recent decades are similar to the California abalone fishery
(Haliotis spp.) where chronic wasting disease completed the
decimation of abalone stocks after they were severely overfished
(Moore et al., 2002) with water temperature increases (Lafferty
and Kuris, 1993) being a driving factor in the initial expression
of the disease and subsequent mortality (Chu et al., 1993).
Similarly, water temperature increases in the mid-Atlantic have
been implicated in oyster disease outbreaks (Soniat et al., 2009,?)
as well as extension of oyster diseases northward along the North
American coast as waters warm due to climate change (Cook
et al., 1998; Hofmann et al., 2001). The disease epidemic plaguing
the native oyster in Chesapeake Bay is part of a pattern seen in
a wide variety of coastal and marine species in recent decades
(Lafferty et al., 2004) and is inhibiting stock recovery of the
Chesapeake Bay oyster, though there is evidence (Burke, 2010;
Carnegie and Burreson, 2011) that disease mortalities in high-
salinity populations of oysters in Virginia waters of Chesapeake
Bay are developing resistance. The first Dermo epidemic caused a
significant drop in oyster harvests from the public grounds, with
a subsequent recovery that peaked at a lower level (Figure 2).
This pattern repeats itself with MSX, and appears to be occurring
again now with respect to the second Dermo epidemic as the
public ground harvest is again showing signs of a significant
recovery, although it is clear from this pattern that the overall
trend is downward and relates to overfishing over time, with
significant disease impacts further suppressing the stocks and
harvest. Based on the observed pattern, harvests can be expected
to increase further, though they will likely not exceed the
numbers recorded prior to the MSX epidemic and remain below
500,000 bushels/year.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Considering the 1950–59 time period, the only time period in
which the repletion program was shown statistically to augment
the public oyster fishery, the following actions are suggested for
the repletion program today if it continues. Only large scale
efforts (>500,000 bushels/shells/year) have a chance at making
a significant impact. Repletion, if done, should at least be this
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size annually. Current shell sources are being depleted. New
sources of shell need to be identified, both from buried former
reefs as well as out-of-state sources, such as mined pre-historic
shell from terrestrial deposits in the Gulf of Mexico. Currently,
rotational harvest schemes are being used in the Rappahannock
River and Tangier/Pocomoke Sound, where in general, a harvest
ground is only harvested every other year. It is unknown of
this rotational method is helping enhance harvest at present,
though a study done several years ago to assess the practice in the
Rappahannock River (Santopietro et al., 2009) suggest it is not.
Further study of the merits of rotational harvest is recommended.
Disease dynamics are shifting to favor oyster survival (Carnegie
and Burreson, 2011) and it is possible this rotational management
may be helpful now. Studies have assessed the shell budget of
reefs in Chesapeake Bay (Mann et al., 2009; Waldbusser et al.,
2013) and found that current shell budgets on Chesapeake most
of Bay oyster habitat are negative. Shell is being lost faster than
it is being replaced, resulting in continuing habitat loss and
constant maintenance of extant habitat via shell plantings. The
abatement of disease, which is allowing for larger harvests in
recent years, will be helpful to reverse this trend as older, larger
oysters produce more shell. However, these are the same oysters
targeted in the fishery. Additionally, recruitment is historically
low in most of the Chesapeake Bay. The few exceptions, in the
Great Wicomico, Lynnhaven, and Pianktank Rivers have been
the target of large-scale restoration efforts with sanctuary reefs,
free from fishing pressure (Schulte and Groth, 2005; Schulte
et al., 2009; Chesapeake Bay Foundation, 2010; TNC, 2017) and
a single area in the lower James River where oyster stocks have
remained higher than all other harvested areas of Chesapeake
Bay (Mann et al., 2009). Large-scale sanctuary projects have
been demonstrated to increase local recruitment (Schulte and
Burke, 2014), this suggests that sanctuaries can play a key role in
stock restoration. Stock levels, if high enough, produce enough
new shell to maintain and/or build habitat. Sanctuary reefs,
appropriately placed and scaled to match the region they are
meant to influence can greatly assist in reversing negative trends
in stocks and shell budgets. Hydrodynamic models coupled with
larval behavior should be used to determine distinct hydrologic
units where restoration projects can be placed to influence a river
or segment of the Bay. Once the size and local circulation is
determined for these units, a properly-sized sanctuary, covering
20–40% of the historic public ground area in the unit, depending
on the degree of larval retention, with areas of lower retention
requiring larger sanctuaries than more retentive regions (USACE,
2012) can be built. Sanctuaries can then increase habitat and
harvests, as well as ecological services provided by oyster
reefs (Kennedy, 1996; Peterson et al., 2003; Coen et al., 2007;
Grabowski and Peterson, 2007; Grabowski et al., 2012). While
harvested areas can be built with thin layers of shells and re-
shelled as needed, ideally enough oyster shell would be produced
to sustain the habitat if harvest management measures, including
rotation, allow enough time for shell accretion once recruitment
is enhanced sufficiently. Sanctuaries should be built at higher
relief from the bottom, at least 0.2 m tall, as this has been shown
to enhance reef function, (Schulte et al., 2009) though they cost
more to build initially than thin-shelled areas. Sanctuaries should
also be protected by placing large stones randomly within them,
to discourage poaching. The stocks should be better managed,
with a fishery-independent survey sufficient to provide the data
necessary to put a TAC (total allowable catch) in place for each
sub-unit where fishing occurs. Most fishermen are older (76%
age 40+) (Kirkley, 1997) and it is recommended that a cap on the
total number of fishing licenses be put in place to partially restrict
access to the fishery. Fishermen in isolated fishing communities,
such as on Tangier Island, who are more dependent on fishing for
income with fewer (if any) other options, should be preferentially
offered licenses as other fishers retire, to help sustain these
communities. Overall, though, effort should be made to shift as
many fishers as possible to sustainable aquaculture, including
cage and rack systems as well as floats, which is where most
industry growth is now occurring (Murray and Hudson, 2011;
Murray, 2013). Fishers can convert to aquaculture practices
either as individuals or by forming co-ops where various tasks
are divided up between different fishers, depending on skills.
The great majority of the world’s oyster production is now via
aquaculture (NOAA, 2017), which is sustainable, and this should
be encouraged in Chesapeake Bay.
Despite its long history and expectations of its continuance,
the data suggests that the Virginia repletion program is neither
cost-effective nor a reasonable means to restore the public
commons wild oyster fishery (Herberich, 2006; Santopietro
et al., 2009) to anything resembling prior levels without
massive, ongoing financial commitments and extensive and
continual use of dredged shell resources, which are not
unlimited. Considering growing public awareness and concerns,
culminating an executive order (Obama, 2009) and significant
changes in Maryland (TNC, 2010), it is highly unlikely that
the large subsidies required will be offered or sustained for
any length of time and the future of the fishery will almost
certainly be driven primarily by increases in sustainable oyster
aquaculture output. Most (95%) of the world’s demand for oysters
is now being met by aquaculture (NOAA, 2017) which does
not rely on destructive harvest practices on wild oyster reefs
but instead reduces the need for such harvests. The Virginian
oyster fishery should consider completing the transition from the
hunter-gathering phase of oyster production to oyster farming,
a far more efficient and less environmentally damaging means
of oyster production. The ecology of Chesapeake Bay will be the
better for it.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and
approved it for publication.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This manuscript was greatly improved by the helpful critique
and comments of Russell P. Burke and Romauld L. Lipcius.
Walter Kloth and Karin Dridge of the US Army Corps
provided considerable assistance with the maps. All appropriate
permissions have been obtained from the copyright holders for
any work reproduced in this manuscript.
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Schulte Virginia Oyster Fishery History
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