WHAT YOU CAN DO - ARTICLE Autumn 1999 John Flood has been developing a system for private citizens to restore oysters to Harness Creek on the South River. If successful, it will serve as a model for people to restore oysters in Severn River creeks and other rivers up and down the Chesapeake. After growing oysters for restoration programs on the Severn and South Rivers for several years, last fall Mr. Flood began thinking about organizing the people on his creek. He also enlisted the support of the South River Federation of Civic Clubs, which has taken an active role in shoreline restoration projects and is headed this year by Drew Koslow, a fishery biologist with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.
"This creek used to be clear to the bottom in 8' of water," Flood says. "I know. I crabbed it when I was a kid in the mid-'60s. Oysters graze the dinoflagellates and diatoms that now cloud it in the summer. It's hard to quantify the effects of oyster restoration in a river, but we can figure out how many oysters it will take to filter this creek every day. Then we can grow 'em and plant 'em." Harness Creek is about a mile long, with lots of people who love it living on one side and Quiet Waters Park on the other. The heavily wooded parkland, protected from development, will work in conjunction with the oysters to clear the water, as will several local efforts to restore underwater grasses. Flood's goal is definitely achievable. He began talking with Bill Goldsborough, Senior Fishery Scientist at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF), and Stewart Harris, who assists Goldsborough as CBF's Maryland Oyster Restoration Coordinator. Chris Judy, who heads the Maryland DNR's oyster restoration programs, signed on as an advisor and helped Flood apply for the necessary bottom leases to create non-harvestable sanctuaries. "We'll look for failures and build on successes," Flood says with a grin. He's planting both cultched oysters (set in a hatchery as spat on "cultch", or whole shell) and cultchless oysters (set on grains of shell), in a range of sizes from spat to large adults, on bottoms of both hard and silty sand. He has even developed a new growing technique to add to the Taylor float that most oyster gardeners use. He whiled away a long summer of disappointing Orioles games by drilling holes in five-gallon buckets and their lids. Hung on knotted lines between planks on his dock, these "bucket gardens" are durable, compact, easy to clean, and stable in rough water. Cultchless oysters show promising growth in them. The next job has been to see what planting techniques work in different parts of the creek. "Now we'll try shell mounds with large adults and cultched spat," he told me last week. "We'll look for survival, growth, and natural reproduction. Monitoring will be an important element. I'm beginning to organize volunteer divers."
He's also looking for areas to build the mounds of shell. He talked with an old friend who oystered Harness Creek years ago, plumbed his own memory from boyhood crabbing trips, and enlisted my skiff's depth sounder to complement the feel of his sounding pole. He and Koslow have analyzed the way the tide flows into and out of the creek, looking especially for eddies to concentrate summer spawning activity. Not many people have that kind of feel for their creeks today, but none of this is rocket science. A closet rod makes a good sounding pole, and any good angler can learn to read hard bottom with even an inexpensive depth sounder. Finding eddies and places where the tide runs fast is simply a matter of spending time on the water, watching it. Most creeks have at least one older resident with a sense of history. So now we're planting shell. Koslow and the South River Federation are helping Flood organize growers and divers. This could work. If it does, energetic groups of citizens in the Severn River watershed and elsewhere will have an advanced tool for cleaning up their creeks, improving habitat for fish and crabs, and eventually helping to revitalize the oyster industry. Creek-by-creek oyster restoration will be especially valuable on rivers such as the Severn with strong underwater grass coverage and active land protection programs like those of the Severn River Land Trust. Stay tuned. John Page Williams is the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's Senior Naturalist and a member of the Severn River Land Trust's Advisory Board. For help with oyster restoration, call Stewart Harris at CBF (410) 268-8816), or phone (410) 923-8800 or email SRLT at exec@SRLT.org
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