Bay’s Oyster Shell Shortage Gets Relief From The West Coast

ANNAPOLIS, Md. – At water’s edge in lower Dorchester County MD, two hulking mounds of oyster shells dwarf docked workboats and nearby storage sheds. John “Benny” Horseman, a waterman turned seafood industry entrepreneur, dubbed the larger pile “Mount Everest” — its peak could well be the highest spot in this low-lying area of the Eastern Shore.

Trucked cross-country from the Pacific Northwest, these shells will help relieve a chronic bottleneck in ambitious efforts to rebuild the Chesapeake Bay’s oyster population. In Maryland, there aren’t nearly enough oyster shells available to meet projected needs for restoring reefs in the state’s oyster sanctuaries and replenishing others in public fishery waters.

Until now, the state has been getting about 230,000 bushels of shells a year for those purposes, most of them from Virginia. But in a report produced in late 2023, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources projected the need for up to 17.5 million bushels of shells over the next decade for oyster sanctuaries and public reefs and to support a growing aquaculture industry.

In response to that report, a task force created by Democratic Gov. Wes Moore has been studying how the state can meet that need, either with shells or alternate substrates such as stones, concrete, porcelain or even steel slag. It’s tasked with providing recommendations by Dec. 1, 2024.

Help is already on the way, though. DNR has authorized the importation this year of more than 200,000 bushels of oyster shells from Washington state. That’s where Horseman and his partners have tapped into a massive stockpile of discarded shells — millions of bushels that were otherwise destined to be ground up for hiking and biking trails, among other things.

“This is going to help majorly,” Horseman said. Before the oyster spawning season begins this summer, he and his group intend to plant these shells on wild fishery reefs in three Eastern Shore counties. They hope to bring in even more shells in years to come.

The shells are from a different species of oyster than what grows in the Chesapeake and along the East and Gulf coasts. Crassostrea gigas are native to the Pacific coast of Asia but have been introduced throughout the Pacific and even in Europe. They are the most widely cultured oyster in the world and have been farmed on the West Coast for a century.

But scientists and conservationists opposed the introduction of nonnative oysters, warning that the newcomers could bring new parasites and diseases to the Bay and may not thrive here.

Ultimately, Maryland, Virginia and federal officials decided instead to redouble efforts to revive native oysters; in 2014 they committed to large reef restoration efforts in five Bay tributaries in each state. Meanwhile, the diseases afflicting oysters abated, and commercial harvests have in the past decade rebounded as the bivalve numbers recovered, though both abundance and harvests are still well below historic levels.

The large restoration projects strained the available supply of oyster shells, which have traditionally been used to provide a landing place or substrate where new generations of oysters grow. Oysters build their own shells, but to get started, freshly spawned larvae, or spat, generally settle on the shells of either dead or living oysters.

Because the diseases MSX and Dermo killed off many of the Bay’s oysters from the late 1980s into the 2000s, though, there were fewer oysters reproducing or being harvested, leaving fewer shells for future generations to set on. Many existing reefs silted over, preventing spat from settling on the bottom.

In Maryland, the loss of habitat was particularly acute because declining harvests shuttered oyster processing facilities, reducing the supply of shells available for replenishing reefs. Shells from the few remaining shucking houses now go mainly to oyster hatcheries.

Now, up to 70% of the oysters harvested in Maryland get shipped to Virginia for shucking and packing, according to the DNR, and the shells only come back if paid for. The numbers returned to Maryland have been limited, both by the cost and by the Virginia oyster processors retaining shells to ensure they have enough for their oyster farms.

Virginia’s shell squeeze isn’t as tight because the state also dredges enough fossil shells every year from the bottom of the James River to replenish about 600 to 800 acres of mostly public fishery reefs.

Maryland also used to dredge up shells from silted-over reefs — up to 5 million bushels annually decades ago — for use in replenishing reefs worn down by harvest. The state stopped the practice in the early 2000s “in part due to a reduction in optimal areas to dredge,” according to DNR.  Also, state’s federal dredging permit expired, and for a time it did not pursue a new one.

In 2008, the Maryland General Assembly directed DNR to seek a permit to dredge shell from Man O’War Shoal, a moribund reef outside the mouth of the Patapsco River that’s estimated to contain up to 100 million bushels. But recreational fishing groups, conservationists and even some watermen objected, contending that dredging would degrade rich underwater fish habitat there.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers finally authorized DNR in 2017 to dredge up to 5 million bushels, but amid continued opposition the state Board of Public Works has never voted to go forward.

For a couple of years, DNR bought fossil shells excavated from a Florida quarry and used them in Harris Creek and the Little Choptank River. Hatchery-reared spat deposited on oyster shells were planted atop the Florida shells. But watermen objected, even staging a floating blockade in the Little Choptank.

The Army Corps, which took the lead in Harris Creek and the Tred Avon River projects, used clam and other shells bought from New Jersey, as well as granite stones. Those likewise garnered pushback from watermen, who cited instances of boats being damaged by stones being piled up too close to the water’s surface.

Watermen maintain that oyster shells are the ideal substrate for oyster larvae. Some research supports that belief, but many other studies have found that other hard materials work as well.

With demand growing, the costs of securing enough shell or other substrates have mounted. DNR estimated it could cost $105 million over the next decade to acquire enough shell.

About 18 months ago, Horseman said, he and his brother Alex, also a waterman, teamed up with Nick Hargrove, owner of Wittman Wharf Seafood in Tilghman, to begin looking for other sources of shell. They found a massive stockpile at an oyster processing facility in South Bend, WA, owned by Oregon-based Pacific Seafood.

They visited the site a couple of times and struck a deal to purchase shells that they were told had been sitting there for a decade or more.

“It was a waste product,” said Hargrove. “They were grinding it up and turning it into park trails.”

“This project … was definitely not for revenue purposes,” said Jenn Allison, manager of the Washington processing plant. Company officials view it as a partnership to help restore Bay oysters and ensure the sustainability of the shellfish industry.

Horseman said he built a conveyor at the Washington facility to load the shells on trucks, then organized convoys of dozens of tractor trailers to bring them to Maryland.

The operation was privately financed, but they still needed approval from state and local regulators to bring the gigas shells in for reef restoration in the Bay.

“The first time we asked about it,” Hargrove recalled, “DNR wrote back and said no.” But he and the Horsemans refused to give up and pressed to win over state officials.

Brian Callam, DNR’s aquaculture coordinator, said state officials initially rejected the idea of importing shells from the West Coast because they were concerned about the possibility that a relatively new disease in Pacific oysters might spread to Eastern oysters. Studies later concluded there was little risk of that happening, he said.

Then, last year, with renewed requests to import Pacific shells, DNR relented.

“All the shellfish pathologists indicated that the risk of bringing in aquatic diseases on shells is low to begin with,” Callam said. Furthermore, he said, keeping the shells on dry land exposed to the air and sunshine for months to years kills any pathogens and “essentially turns them into a pile of rocks. There’s virtually no risk at all.”

This spring, though, DNR issued three new permits allowing the importation of 220,000 bushels of Pacific oyster shell this year. Two of the permits allow a combined 200,000 bushels for the Horseman brothers’ Dorchester County businesses: Farm Creek Oyster Farm and Madison Shell Recycling.

The other permit authorizes 20,000 bushels of imported shell by the WRF Group, a Cambridge-based business that Maryland has commissioned to restore oyster sanctuaries in Eastern Bay as part of a sixth large restoration project the state has initiated.

Watermen have welcomed the imports, especially because the bulk of the shell is promised for replenishing reefs in public fishery areas, which they feel have been shortchanged in favor of sanctuary reefs.

“It’s what we have to do if we want to continue growing,” said Jeff Harrison, chairman of the Talbot (County) Watermen Association. This year, with the imported shells augmenting what’s available closer to home, Harrison said his group will be able to plant twice as much as they would have otherwise.

The permits specify that the shells must be stored on land for an unspecified interval until the oyster tissue has decomposed and there are no other organic materials present. They also say the shells should be stored “far enough from Maryland waters such that any inadvertent introduction by storm or flood is unlikely.” The latter condition is challenging, given the low-lying nature of Dorchester County. The stockpile on Farm Creek in Toddville is on gravel next to the water.

Allison Colden, Maryland director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and a fisheries biologist, said that with proper biosecurity precautions she’s okay with using Pacific oyster shell in the Bay.

“As long as the material’s inspected, and we know where it’s come from,” Colden said, “and that [it’s determined to be] no risk, it can be useful because the demand for shell across all sectors is only continuing to grow.”

After inspecting shells that have already arrived, DNR asked that dirt and debris, including bits of twine, be removed. On a recent visit to the Farm Creek stockpile, Horseman had an employee hand-culling the twine from the shells. Spring rains, he said, would wash out any dirt.

“As long as the economics support it,” said DNR’s Callam, “I think we’re going to see continued interest in bringing this material in here until we generate enough of our own shells that we no longer need to import it. There are some people [who] have concerns about it, but I feel very confident that we are taking all the appropriate steps to make sure that the material that’s coming in is as safe as possible.”

Holding a Pacific oyster shell in his hand, Horseman said he thinks it may even be superior to native Eastern oyster shells for converting oyster larvae to spat.

“These shells are better because they’ve got more ripples for the larvae to catch onto,” he said.