With the oyster fishery basically at a standstill in the upper Bay due to mortality from freshwater rains and the hurricane, those in Talbot County’s local oyster fishery report that oysters here look good so far.
However, retired skipjack Captain Kermit Travers says that “it’s still too soon to tell.” He explains that it takes a while to pull oysters off the top of the bars and see what’s underneath – local watermen will have a better sense of the situation next month. Travers stood inside Harrison Oyster Company on Tilghman Island with two other shuckers, working at a long stainless counter. In front of each of them was a pile of several hundred oysters, all from local waters.
With a quick flip of his wrist, he pops an oyster out of a shell and into a stainless steel container, grabs another, and keeps shucking. A professional oyster shucker since 1976, Captain Travers won several national shucking championships over the years. With a rich history as a captain on various skipjacks, and 32 years on the water, he is anticipating the release of a book about his life by a well known black history writer, sometime next year.
“Look here,” he points to a plump, large oyster, “this one’s a count.” He describes the various grades of oysters – “standards,” “selects,” and “counts” – the largest of all. A tall and dignified man, Travers talked and shucked at the same time, his hands moving quickly and gracefully under the thick gloves and finger protectors.
Neil Lednum, of Harrison Oyster Company, reports that Harrison’s is buying some 100 bushels of oysters each day, most from local waters. He stepped outside to meet Aquaholic, a local boat loaded with nine bushels of oysters. Using mechanical assistance, the two men lifted the bushels one by one, removed the tags mandated by the state indicating who harvested the oysters where, and dumped them into a large “tote” with the word “Bevan” on the side. Bevan, one of the largest buyers of oysters from the Chesapeake, is located in Westmoreland County, Virginia. More than a dozen of the large totes around Harrisons are designated “Bevan”.
According to Lisa Gowe of the Talbot County Watermen’s Association, oysters in our region are in good shape. She reports that although a dozen or so watermen are working the water here, many of the local watermen in our region are working “down the Bay” at present – from Crisfield to the western shore, and will be back in our region after Christmas.
With the broad, open waters in the lower Bay, harvesting oysters is very difficult in the frigid months of January and February, and local watermen work closer to home then, in these more protected waters. She says that in the lower Bay, both young oysters and harvest size oysters are numerous and healthy.
The Talbot County Waterman’s Association is planning to launch a new shell reclamation initiative sometime next month in local restaurants. Gowe explains the Waterman’s Association would like to replenish local oyster bars with clean shell, such as shell that comes from restaurants. By adding clean shell to the top of bars, oyster larvae have a better chance of “striking” and growing on the oyster bars. Replenishing the bars with fresh shell is an ongoing maintenance task, but the shell does need time to dry out. The State has created a program in recent years to reclaim shell from restaurants, but most of that shell has been going into storage for production of spat on shell at Horn Point Laboratory in Cambridge. Despite having multiple football field sized piles of shell in storage, Gowe reports that the DNR refuses to sell any shell back to the Talbot County Watermen’s Association this year, and they are not able to replenish oyster bars in our area at all. The Talbot County Watermen’s Association intends to change that, and you can expect to learn more about this initiative in the upcoming months.[slideshow id=53]
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