July 5, 2016 — MANTEO, N.C. — North Carolina will spend more than $1.6 million improving the habitats of oysters living in its waters.
The money will go toward further restoring oyster sanctuaries in the Pamlico and Albemarle sounds in hopes the species will rebound to levels not seen in decades.
“The General Assembly’s new budget takes big steps toward making coastal North Carolina the Napa Valley of oysters,” Todd Miller, founder and executive director of the North Carolina Coastal Federation, said in a news release.
The state’s 2015 wild oyster harvest of 119,000 pounds is nearly 20,000 pounds less than in 2014 but still much higher than in the 1990s and 1980s when diseases decimated the population.
The total population was 800,000 pounds in 1889, when scientists first began measuring the catch. It fell to 200,000 pounds by 1960.