The University of Maryland's Horn Point Laboratory in Cambridge is home to research on the Chesapeake Bay's native oyster, Crassostreavirginica, and an Asian oyster that some officials want to introduce into the bay.
Donald W. Meritt, a scientist there, said that each year the lab produces about 100 million tiny native oysters, which are called spat. These spat are grown in a bath of water taken from the Choptank River, with their food sometimes supplemented by specially grown algae. They are then transported to laboratories and oyster-seeding programs around the state.
Asian oyster spat grow at Horn Point Laboratory in Cambridge.
(James M Thresher -- The Washington Post)
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The laboratory's work with the Asian oyster, Crassostreaariakensis, is part of a larger scientific and political debate. Some officials in Maryland look to the Asian oyster as a potential replacement for the native oyster, which has been decimated by disease and pollution. But others, including several state legislators and federal scientists, have said that much more research is needed before the Asian oyster can be certified as safe for the bay.
At the Horn Point Lab, Meritt said, researchers are trying to determine whether the Asian oyster's reproduction would interfere with the reproduction of the native oyster, and how well it would fare in the less-salty waters of the upper Chesapeake.
-- David A. Fahrenthold
