The Chesapeake Bay Oyster

Oyster shell found in a exposed breakwater on Chic's Beach, Virginia after a hurricane

     While this may seem like a departure from the food history format of this blog, it is a backwards look at the history of one of our signature Tidewater foods – the oyster. After all, every good pirate and tavern owner should know their local waters. And I recently learned lot about oysters.
     Those of us who live in the Tidewater area tend to think of oysters as one of our signature seafoods, so it surprised me to learn that oysters were cultivated in Italy during the first century B.C. Sergius Orata, a Roman engineer, grew his oysters on a rock piles surrounded by twigs in the lakes of Southern Italy. Somehow he knew what we now know - that oysters preferred to live in colonies, like a solid surface to grow on, and once the larval oysters roost they do not move but expend their energy growing larger. With his manmade oyster reef Orata could easily monitor his crops, and when his oysters reached a marketable size he could remove them and sell them.
So where do oysters live and how do they grow?
     Oysters tend to congregate in colonies and form oyster reefs which create habitats similar to coral reefs. Oysters are only mobile for the first two weeks of their life. Then they prefer to have a hard surface upon which to attach, and will happily just continue to grow larger and larger while piled on top of each other in the same location. Since the average depth here in the Chesapeake Bay is only 21 feet these intertidal animals may be exposed for 5-6 hours per day between the high and low tides marks and still survive. Oyster reefs are the largest source of hard surface on the Bay’s bottom and provide food and shelter for other species like mussels, barnacles, red beard sponge, rockfish, eels, pig fish, sheep’s head, drum, spadefish, pipefish, croaker, spot, pinfish, blue crabs, and several invertebrates.
     Oysters are filter feeders meaning they pump large volumes of water through their gills. As they filter the water to obtain food, they also filter out plankton and sediment which helps to clear the water and preserve the quality of the Bay’s habitat. A single adult oyster can filter about 50 gallons of water a day. The oyster population a few decades ago was able to filter the entire Bay every week. With the decline is the number of oysters and the modern day pressure on the Chesapeake Bay it would take the current oyster population a year to accomplish the same job.
     Captain John Smith was introduced to oysters by the Native Americans in the 1600's and wrote that the oyster beds were so prolific they created an impediment to navigation. I’ve been told by interpreters at Jamestown Colony in Jamestown, Virginia that the oysters at that time measure 13” across. We're not sure of the age of the oyster shell in the photo above, but it was discovered wedged down deep in a previously unseen rock breakwater uncovered by a hurricane. Locally harvested oysters from a nerby area recently reopened for shellfishing only measure 4.5".
What happened to our local oysters?
     The American east coast native oyster, Crassostrea virginica, formed the backbone of a thriving Chesapeake Bay oyster industry from the Civil War time period until the mid 1980’s. At present the population of Chesapeake Bay oysters is just 2% of what it was prior to 1850. How did that happen? A combination of loving oysters and a booming population loving bayfront living contributed to overharvesting, a decline in oyster habitat, and a decline in the water quality of the Bay. At present the Chesapeake Bay watershed encompasses 64,000, square miles in six contiguous states. Of that total mileage 11,600 is tidal shoreline, and at present approximately 17,000 million people live in the watershed with about 10 million living along its shores or near them. The combination of working, living, recreating and all the inherent pollutants that come along with profiting from and just enjoying the Bay (we won't even talk about dog and goose poop pollution here!) have compromised the water quality of our beautiful National Treasure the Chesapeake Bay.
     Interestingly the name “Chesapeake” comes from the Native American word
"Tschiswapeki," meaning "great shellfish bay." So please do what you can to protect our beautiful Chesapeake Bay and keep the oysters growing for our generation and those to come.
For more information visit:
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation http://www.cbf.org/
Lynnhaven River Now http://www.LRNow.org/