Will politics still stymie better oyster management?

By Robert Wieland

08/04/2009

In 1983, Vic Kennedy and Linda Breisch published a paper in the Journal of Environmental Management called "Sixteen Decades of Political Management of the Oyster Fishery in Maryland's Chesapeake Bay". For any Marylander who likes oysters, the paper is a depressing read, documenting the failed attempts to change the way oysters are managed in the state. Time and again, efforts to introduce more rational policies have been overwhelmed by tidewater legislators.

Amazingly, the political influences that Kennedy and Breisch document in their history still persist, even as the oyster fishery shrinks to near zero.

It works this way. The tidewater legislators argue for watermen's "right to make a living" by keeping public oyster bottom open and publicly funding a put-and-take fishery. Legislators from the rest of the state largely accommodate the tidewater legislators on these matters. If the watermen are adamant about keeping oyster bars open to anyone with a boat and a license, there is no political pay-off for the legislator who asks, "But is this sustainable?" There might be large political costs to asking that question.

So, the question of whether open-access oyster harvests are sustainable does not get asked by Maryland's legislators. Nor has it been seriously addressed by the Department of Natural Resources. Even as we have watched oyster abundance slide from one historical low to another, the question of whether harvesting as many oysters as commercially feasible is good or bad for stocks does not get asked by the people who matter.

Several months ago, I spoke up at a meeting in Cambridge, Maryland about whether to introduce a non-native oyster species to the bay. I argued in favor of a moratorium on harvests and, to the watermen's credit, they let me say my piece, although they were strongly opposed to that option.

When I left, a fellow stopped me in the hall and asked this rhetorical question. "What self-respecting group of Americans is going to get together and say, hey, come take my livelihood away?" I was taken aback by his frankness. This fellow could understand that it might be better to close the fishery for a time so that stocks could rebuild. But his loyalty was to his profession. Why should anyone expect him to say in public, "Yes, close down the fishery".

My argument for closing the oyster fishery was based on research that asked the question, what maximizes the value of the oyster resource, harvesting them aggressively now, or closing down the fishery, and letting stocks rebuild? This work was funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Chesapeake Bay Office and it suggested that allowing stocks to rebuild by limiting harvests, the one mortality factor over which we have any control, would generate net economic benefits, even considering the capital costs of idling the harvest fleet. If we include the value of the ecological services that oysters deliver, the benefits from restricting harvest effort become even greater.

In a 2008 report, the Oyster Advisory Commission could not quite bring itself to recommend a moratorium on harvests. But it did recommend closing down a large river system and focusing stock rebuilding efforts there. It also recommended limiting harvest effort baywide. Either of those policies would entail a radical departure from the way that DNR has managed oyster harvests in the past. Could it be that a new day is dawning for oyster management in Maryland?

DNR's Fisheries Service has traditionally believed that it works for Maryland's watermen. It has further limited its focus to keeping watermen happy this season, regardless of the implications for the next season.

I can think of two ways this might change. First, DNR might accept empirical evidence showing that leaving the fishery open to unrestrained harvests will, under current conditions, lead to diminished value from the resource. In the interest of the watermen that they serve, DNR would then restrict harvests to increase the longer term value of the resource. Or, two, the voting public might take a sufficient interest in the issue to ask their legislators to compel DNR to manage the oyster resource as if next year matters.

We shall see how all of this unfolds as DNR and the lobbying groups gear up for the 2010 legislative session. I don't know how that will go, but I have a sense of foreboding. The political influences that Kennedy and Breisch described 26 years ago are still at work and we can now talk about eighteen and one half decades of political management of the oyster fishery. But, we also can all clearly see the possibility of a Chesapeake Bay without standing stocks of oysters, if we continue down this path. Maybe that will make a difference. Maybe we will finally start getting oyster management right in Maryland, next year.