Jan 9, 2008 6:30 pm US/Eastern
Oysters Thriving In Choptank River
CAMBRIDGE, Md. (WJZ) ―
Sometimes you have to turn things upside down to make them work. As
Alex DeMetrick reports, that may be the case for bringing oysters back in the Chesapeake Bay.
At rest in the Choptank River just might be the flotilla of the future. There were 3,000 floats, containing upwards of one million oysters, thriving near the surface.
"On the bottom, the oyster has to work a lot harder to make ends meet," said Bob Maze with Marinetics, Inc.
Down deep, it's heavy silt, low oxygen and greater mortality from oyster diseases. But up top where food and oxygen are abundant, the oysters "tolerate the disease because they're able to obtain enough energy to out-strip the disease effects," Maze said.
At Marinetics Incorporated, they not only build the floats by hand in a converted chicken house, they also breed oysters in much the same way university researchers do.
For years, millions have been spent trying to get these babies to grow, usually on new reefs constructed from clean oyster shells.
The end results are oysters remarkably uniform in shape, quality and taste.
Unlike wild oysters, high end restaurants are turning to these oysters because they are available year-round.
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