By Christy Goodman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 16, 2009

A state program that grows baby oysters in cages before planting them on reefs will be expanded this year to 11 more tributaries in Southern Maryland, Anne Arundel County and the Eastern Shore, state officials announced last week.

The Marylanders Grow Oysters project, handled by the state Department of Natural Resources' shellfish program, now operates only on piers in the Tred Avon River in Talbot County. With the additional waterways, DNR staff will shift their workload to 13 local organizations.

"The cages and oysters are free . . . and they get the work done," said Christopher C. Judy, the DNR's shellfish manager, who said the state is covering the cost of the project, which exceeds $100,000.

More than 175 people in the Tred Avon program cared for about 850 cages filled with between 500 and 1,000 baby oysters, known as spat, Judy said. Half of the Tred Avon oysters, now about the size of a quarter, will be planted on a sanctuary reef this summer, and the other half will continue to grow in cages and possibly reproduce, he said.

"What we did in the Tred Avon, now it is their job to do in their river," Judy said, referring to members of organizations such as the Patuxent Chapter of Coastal Conservation Association Maryland and the Magothy River Association, which will begin growing the spat in their creeks and rivers.

The program, introduced by Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) last summer, comes after years of inconclusive studies and millions of dollars spent by federal and state governments trying to find a way to bring back the native oyster, which has fallen victim to overfishing, disease and pollution. The Chesapeake Bay's oyster population is at 1 percent of its historic levels, according to oyster experts.

One DNR cage filled with spat about a half-inch to an inch in size can filter as much as 50 gallons of water an hour, Judy said. One adult oyster at three to four inches will filter 50 gallons of water a day, making the oysters the bay's natural filter.

This summer's project adds 5,000 cages in the 11 waterways, which would place about 2.5 million spat in the water.

The wire mesh cages, constructed by inmates in Maryland's prison system, are slightly larger than mailboxes. The spat are grown at the state's oyster hatchery in Cambridge. The cages and spat, affixed to shell to help support their growth, will be trucked late this summer to the local associations.

Those groups are responsible for supplying volunteers to distribute and care for the oysters. That includes regular maintenance to knock silt off the oysters or to scrape barnacles and other growth from the cages, Judy said.

The Southern Maryland Oyster Cultivation Society plans to use special maintenance-free floats that include a barrel-shaped cage in the lower Patuxent River area, Judy said.

The shape enables the cage to rotate with the tides, knocking off silt and starving growth before it takes hold, said the designer, Jon Farrington of Jonny Oyster Seed, an oyster hatchery in Broomes Island.

The Patuxent River Chapter of Coastal Conservation Association Maryland has 500 cages coming from the Marylanders Grow Oysters project. The group, which has several oyster gardening projects in the water in Calvert and St. Mary's counties, will add those cages to 1,000 more that were made possible from a grant by the Dominion Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Dominion Resources, chapter President Scott McGuire said.

He said his group will focus on adding oyster cages to Cat Creek in St. Mary's, Battle Creek in Calvert and all the creeks downstream from those on the Patuxent.