ANNAPOLIS, Md. – As Maryland works to complete the last of five large oyster restoration projects it committed to a decade ago, state officials have decided to tackle three more.
The state has restored more than 1,100 acres of reefs so far in Harris Creek and the Little Choptank, Tred Avon and Manokin rivers, all on the Eastern Shore, and in the St. Mary’s River off the lower Potomac.
Now, the Department of Natural Resources has announced it intends to restore and repopulate hundreds of acres more in oyster sanctuaries in Herring Bay on the Western Shore and in the Nanticoke River and Hooper Strait on the Eastern Shore.
“These three large-scale restoration sanctuaries represent a new chapter for oyster restoration in Maryland,” DNR Secretary Josh Kurtz said in announcing the selection on Oct. 9. “We’ve had tremendous success with our existing restoration sanctuaries, and we’re excited to build on that achievement and keep up the momentum for oyster recovery in the Chesapeake Bay.”
Maryland and the federal government have spent more than $87 million so far rebuilding reefs and planting hatchery-reared oyster spat in the first five sanctuaries. The effort has proven durable to date with nearly all reefs at least 6 years old yielding the minimum expected densities of bivalves, or better — and 83% sustaining the hoped-for goal of more than 50 oysters per square meter.
All but the Manokin, off Tangier Sound, are considered at least initially “restored.” DNR expects to finish seeding the Manokin in 2025, which would meet the deadline set in the 2014 Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement. Under that pact, Maryland and Virginia each pledged to undertake large-scale restoration of oyster habitat in five of their Bay tributaries. Virginia has completed restoration in four of the five rivers it targeted — the Lafayette, Piankatank, Great Wicomico and Lower York — with just 38 acres left to reach its goal in the Lynnhaven River in Virginia Beach.
The state-federal Chesapeake Bay Program is moving to update the 2014 agreement. Anticipating new oyster restoration goals, Maryland’s DNR sought feedback from its Oyster Advisory Commission in late summer on which sanctuaries to work on next. Herring Bay, Hooper Strait and the Nanticoke River were among the commission’s top choices, officials said.
Chris Judy, DNR’s shellfish division manager, said the department estimates that these new large restoration projects will cost $16.3 million in all, about one-fifth of what it cost to do the first five. The lower cost is mainly because DNR is planning to do comparatively little physical reef construction, which made the earlier projects more expensive.
The actual acreage to be restored will be set after further study of the selected areas, DNR officials said. But they expect the Hooper Strait project to be comparable in size to the state’s three largest restoration sites so far. Harris Creek and the Little Choptank and Manokin rivers ranged from 348 to 455 acres.
Hooper Strait, a narrow waterway connecting the Nanticoke and a few other Eastern Shore tributaries to the Chesapeake, has about 5,000 acres of historic oyster bottom, according to a 2021 DNR report. The area to be seeded, though, is likely to be a fraction of that.
Herring Bay could be the state’s largest project yet. About 20 miles south of Annapolis, it has almost 8,000 acres of historic oyster bottom, according to the DNR report. Though some has silted over, there is still extensive firm bottom, and DNR officials are planning to build new reefs there in addition to planting spat-on-shell.
The entire Nanticoke River was put off-limits to commercial oyster harvest in 2010 when the state expanded its network of oyster sanctuaries. But only a small part of the river is historic oyster bottom, and DNR officials estimate it will require planting just 175 acres.
“Together, these three restoration sanctuaries will strengthen the diversity of Maryland’s sanctuary program,” said Lynn Fegley, DNR’s fishing and boating services director. “With new projects on both the Western and the Eastern Shore, as well as the mid- and lower Bay, we’re helping to spread out disease risk and increase the oyster broodstock across all areas of the Chesapeake Bay.”
The new effort is being launched at a financially challenging time for Maryland with fiscal experts warning that a mismatch between tax revenues and state spending could lead to structural deficits reaching billions of dollars in the next few years. Unless something changes, that budget crunch could pose a hurdle to the new projects.
For the three new projects, DNR’s Judy said the department has requested $14.5 million be included in the state’s capital budget for fiscal year 2026 to pay for 75 acres of reef construction and seeding with another $1.8 million to be directed toward seeding the Nanticoke sanctuary. Whether those requests are granted ultimately depends on General Assembly action next year.
Some federal funding could help. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently awarded Maryland a $10 million grant to build 50 to 75 acres of reefs within an existing oyster sanctuary. DNR’s Judy said officials plan to use that money in the new effort, though where it will be spent has yet to be determined.
Pending funding availability, DNR expects to start planting in the Nanticoke in the spring and summer of 2025 with work to begin in Herring Bay in 2026 and in Hooper Strait sometime afterward.
Even before announcing these three large projects, DNR had begun a new restoration effort in Eastern Bay, where state lawmakers directed that $2 million a year be spent in 2024 and 2025 on spat-on-shell plantings, divided equally between sanctuaries and public fishery areas. Watermen had complained this summer that the sanctuaries there were getting all the plantings, but by fall the wild harvest areas had gotten more, Judy said.