Report: Aquaculture might save oysters

By PAMELA WOOD, Staff Writer

Published 01/16/08

In 20 years, the government will no longer pour money into oysters to boost the population and help struggling watermen.

By then, a significant influx of cash and a focus on restoration will have brought oysters back from the brink, while watermen will have mostly switched to farming oysters instead of catching them in the wild.

That's the ambitious vision of a state commission charged with thinking up new ways to fix Maryland's oyster problems.

"We think it's the only option we have," commission Chairman Bill Eichbaum said of the vision, which is laid out in an interim report scheduled to be...

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Half empty or half full? - 2008-01-17 11:45:13

I can sympathize with watermen whose traditional form of making a living is in jeopardy. But I do have a hard time understanding the extreme reluctance to convert to aquaculture. Millions of people who have lost their jobs get retrained in new industries every year. Aquaculture provides watermen with an opportunity to be retrained but stay in the oyster industry and be part of making the Chesapeake Bay oyster business a highly successful one once again. Watermen in VA are already dipping their toes into it and they're finding the water quite nice. If the government would provide the funding necessary for individual watermen to make this change -- as it does for retraining in other industries -- it seems to me to be a great opportunity. Let's not automatically assume big firms are going to take things over at the expense of the individual oysterman. What about watermen starting their own cooperatives or joint business ventures?

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