That perception changed in June, when the Corps of Engineers began dumping a test batch of 1.3 million oysters into the Great Wicomico. A swarm of rays showed up even before the dumping was done, Martin said, and the release was stopped with 300,000 oysters still to go.
When the rays finished a three-week feeding spree, just one-quarter of the $78,000 batch of oysters was left.
The cownose ray is partial to oysters, as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers learned in an expensive lesson as part of its bay restoration effort.
(AP)
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_____Chesapeake Bay_____
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But Martin said Corps of Engineers scientists learned lessons for future oyster releases and still considered the release a success, since some oysters survived.
"This is just a minor hiccup," he said.
The appetite of cownose rays for oysters has been known to watermen for decades, said Ronald Bevans, who owns the Bevans Oyster Co. in Kinsale, Va.
In one oyster ground near his business, Bevans said, rays decimated a population of about 7 million oysters in a few weeks. Now, he said, scraping the bed turns up not live oysters, but fragments of shells smashed by the rays.
"This problem goes back years and years," he said.
To solve it, some oyster farmers put their bivalves in mesh bags, and others protect them with cages or fencing.
The Corps of Engineers will probably follow their lead this fall, when it plans to dump 15 million more oysters into the Great Wicomico, Martin said.
"We have built fences to keep out soldiers and special forces" in other spots around the world, Martin said. "We feel pretty confident that we can build a fence that can keep out the cownose ray."
