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Pamlico Sound must have been an astonishing place in the 18th and 19th centuries. Old salts told tales of oyster reefs so teeming with aquatic life that they were a menace to navigation.
Oyster dredgers working under sail and later steam hauled in millions of bushels of the salty bivalves each year. Some were consumed on the spot; some were packed off to restaurants in the big cities. Others were destined for the canning trade.
It wasn't just that oysters were good to eat. They were also good for the water quality. Oysters cleanse the water around them; there once were enough of them in Chesapeake Bay to filter its entire volume of water every few days.
That was before over-harvesting dramatically reduced the brook stock, before land clearing for farming and development contaminated the water and before industrialists poured toxic chemicals into East Coast estuaries.
Thousands of acres of reefs
In the first year of this century, oyster landings were down to as little as 50,000 bushels in this state. But things have slowly improved. The Division of Marine Fisheries, working with scientists and coastal advocates, have built artificial oyster reefs designed to invigorate the stock of oysters and clean up coastal waters.
Those reefs have been promising. Oyster larvae have grown on these reefs, yet two concerns have arisen: In some cases their production has been offset by the size of the commercial catch. But to really restore the oyster in some abundance and make coastal areas the thriving oyster grounds they once were, the state needs thousands of acres of oyster reefs. Now there's some reason for optimism.
In the Chesapeake Bay, the New York Times reported last week, oysters are on the rebound. Marine scientists working with the College of William & Mary say they have successfully created large oyster reefs that now teem with 180 million native oysters.
The survival rate of oysters on these reefs, principally near the entrance of the Wicomico River a few miles south of the mouth of the Potomac, is much higher than researchers first expected. One reason is that researchers have learned how to build successful oyster reefs. Early efforts to build small, relatively low reefs were problematic. They were adversely affected by sediment stirred up from the bottom. Filtering that sediment consumed too much energy for oysters to grow well; when researchers raised the reef height into clearer water, and built much larger reefs, the oysters began to be much healthier.
Give oysters a chance
That's a point that researchers and advocates in North Carolina waters have understood as well. The N.C. Coastal Federation has been working on experimental oyster reefs for years, as has the Division of Marine Fisheries. Those reefs, notes Coastal Federation Executive Director Todd Miller, “have been very successful.”
Now the two organizations have landed $5 million federal recovery act grant that will build more than 49 acres of new oyster reefs with 54,000 tons of limestone riprap mined near New Bern. The plan is to build two oyster sanctuaries – permanently protected so as to provide a perpetual place where oysters can grow and spread to other areas.
Barges will begin delivering basketball-size chunks of limestone to two sanctuary targets in the next few weeks. One of them is a spot called Clam Shoal just inside Hatteras Island; the other is known as Crab Hole, south of Wanchese on Roanoke Island.
The plan is to place the stone in approximately 20 feet of water, leaving about seven feet of water above the tops of the reefs. That would leave these areas navigable for shallow-draft vessels. And while the oysters on those reefs will not be available for harvesting, the reefs should attract a variety of fish species and make the area attractive to hook-and-line fishermen.
The project also includes money to pay commercial fishermen to plant 40,000 bushels of old oyster shells in 19 spots from Ocracoke to Myrtle Grove Sound to boost smaller oyster restoration sites.
Miller said the project originally contemplated five project areas, though funding came through just for the two projects. But if the reefs are as successful as scientists hope, they likely will boost support for more oyster reefs in scores of places all over Pamlico Sound and nearby waters.
Sweet, succulent and salty
If the reefs are finished this fall and oyster larvae known as spat attach to the reef on schedule, there should be small oysters by this time next year and mature oysters in two years.
That would be remarkable progress – and hasten the day when Tar Heel oysters are the toast of the coast. North Carolina waters – particularly Rose Bay and Stump Sound – have to my palate produced some of the world's best oysters: sweet, succulent and salty. When N.C. oysters are healthy, you can eat them all year long, and none of that month-with-and-R-in-it hokum, either.
I gave up raw oysters some years ago, along with fast company and hard liquor. But I never have gotten my fill of good steamed oysters like the ones they serve down in the back at the Sunnyside in Williamston or up on the counter at the Roanoke in Plymouth. I can taste ‘em now.
Jack Betts is an Observer associate editor based in Raleigh: jbetts@charlotteobserver.com.
