Oyster Restoration Projects
The restoration of the Chesapeake Bay's oyster population requires a multi-faceted approach, including raising and planting baby oysters, improving habitat, monitoring, education and strengthening economic viability. Here are some of the restoration projects the Oyster Recovery Partnership is working to on to achieve their goals.
Oyster Planting
A majority of the 2.2 billion oysters we have planted since 2000 were placed on oyster sanctuaries and managed reserve bars and on occasion on harvest bars, aquaculture test areas and educational displays.
Learn about our recovery efforts by year as well as use an interactive map that provides a visual summary of all plantings, bottom mapping, monitoring surveys and more.
Shell Recycling Alliance
The Oyster Recovery Partnership, in partnership with local Baltimore, Washington DC and Annapolis based catering companies and restaurants, has launched the Shell Recycling Alliance to recycle used oyster shell. Collecting and reusing these shells is needed not only for their ecologic benefits in being able to enhance the wild population with hatchery produced stock, but also to raise awareness with the public as to their value as well as the value of oysters to the Bay’s overall recovery. Learn more about the program.
Hatchery Operations
The University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) Horn Point Lab produces billions of oyster larvae. Once the larvae are ready to set, they are poured into 12 foot round setting tanks, where the eyed larvae affixthemselves to the clean oyster shell. Once they harden for about a week, the baby oysters (spat on shell) are then removed from the tanks and placed on an ORP planting vessel that plants them on prepared oyster reefs. The ORP Field Operation handles all the logistics of cleaning and moving all the shell into and out of the tanks.
Site Preparation
All oyster recovery sites are chosen and prepared to provide maximum habitat value for the seed oysters. Operational partners including the Maryland Watermen Association, NOAA and the Department of Natural Resources are directly involved in the site preparation through reclaiming silt covered shell, shell plantings, and a side-scan sonar bottom survey that helps identify areas of the Bay bottom suitable for restoration.
Monitoring
Scientists from the the University of Maryland Paynter Labs and Morgan State visit and sample most of our sites every year to monitor for dermo disease presence, mortality, growth and size data. All data analysis is conducted by the Paynter Labs.