In my Northern Neck Update that I emailed out this month one of the things I wrote about was the oyster hatchery.

The response from that update has been phenomenal.

One person who responded asked several questions. 2 of those questions were:

1.    Didn't I read that they were planning to produce a non-native species that was thought to be better able to survive the existing pollution? 

2.    Would this cause any further decline for native species? 

The non-native oyster wouldn’t be able to survive pollution better (remember the oyster can filter a lot of pollution) but the non-native is resistant to the disease, dermo, which caused the most death of the native oyster.

What the oyster packers like about this oyster is it grows so fast. Much faster than the native oyster. Therefore they can plant this oyster and process it faster.

Now this creates a whole new set of questions. One of these would be if this non-native oyster would take over and we would lose the native oyster? When answering that question it opens another set of questions among which, is it worth losing the native oyster in order to clean the bay with this non-native?

NOW PAY ATTENTION! What can be done is that this non-native oyster can be produced in a hatchery as a triploid. What is a tripoid? A tripoid is a sterile oyster.

On the surface this sounds pretty good but there is another advantage to the oyster packer on this again. This tripoid is like the fattened calf. Calves that are grown for beef are castrated. This causes them to grow faster. The same is true with a tripoid oyster.

Here is one of my major concerns. This tripoid oyster is produced in a hatchery funded from public monies. The oyster packer wants total control of the hatchery. The seed produced goes on state owned bottom that has been leased back to the oyster packer. Sounds like corporate welfare to me but that is another issue.

Now you might be thinking well at least these oysters are filtering some of the pollutants. Yes, this is true but only in those tributaries that are close to the oyster packers facilities and they are not producing any larvae that the tide can move to settle on the other oyster beds in the bay’s tributaries. Those beds that are for the waterman to work and also open to any citizen of the state. Forget about the part for the waterman if you want ( I’ll address that in another post). Think about it in the filtering factor and bay clean-up.

This same hatchery could produce a native oyster.

Then your next question is, “Wouldn’t the disease, dermo cause this oyster to die?”

Answer, work is now being done with a disease resistant native oyster but even this isn’t going to help the bay if it is produced as a tripoid or without the help of the Chesapeake Bay's watermen.

I’ll try to explain that in my next post.