February 24, 2015 — Virginia has enjoyed huge oyster harvests for the past two seasons, taking in 504,000 bushels last year and 409,000 the year before that. The season now winding down looks healthy, too.
But don't get used to it.
The Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries have had a couple years of rather poor spat sets that bode a leaner harvest for the 2015-16 season that begins in the fall. A spat set is when oyster larvae attach to bottom shell so they can survive and grow to market-size.
As a result, the Shellfish Management Advisory Committee met Monday to consider a range of options being floated to curtail commercial harvest from public reefs next season, from shortening the workweek to culling hundreds of oyster fishing licenses to a draconian reduction in the daily harvest limit to four bushels per person. The limit now is eight bushels.
The advisory committee is part of the Virginia Marine Resources Commission (VMRC), which regulates nearly all fisheries in the state.
Experts say a four-bushel daily limit is pretty much dead in the water, largely because it would put watermen out of business.
"That went on the table and went off the table and was firmly removed," said Roger Mann, a fisheries scientist at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) in Gloucester Point. "It was put up there purely to make people understand that there is not enough to go around."
Read the full story at the Newport News Daily Press