The news that native oyster beds are disappearing around the world has hit home especially hard here in Oregon.
According to the Nature Conservancy, 85% of the world’s wild oyster reefs are gone. In our state, they’ve been teetering on the edge of extinction for almost a century.
Confused? Wondering where all those oysters you’ve gobbled up in restaurants come from? Here are some answers.
A Brief History Of The West Coast Oyster
The decline of the wild Olympia oyster of the west begins in 1849 with the California Gold Rush. Dick Vander Schaaf with the Nature Conservancy of Oregon says when gold miners struck it rich, they went to San Francisco for “wine, women, song and oysters.” The booming population of the Bay area quickly ate up all the local oysters and began to import them from the Pacific Northwest. In the late 1890′s, Washington oystermen were shipping 130,000 bushels of oysters a year. A decade or two later, the Olympia oyster was pretty much wiped out along the West Coast.
Oyster bed restoration in Netarts Bay. Courtesy The Nature Conservancy © Stephen Anderson/TNC.
Vander Schaaf says during this period, the oyster industry in Oregon was centered in three areas; Netarts Bay in Tillamook County, Yaquina Bay near Newport, and Coos Bay. Over harvesting was just one of the problems. Oyster habitat was degraded by heavy sediment released by logging and forest fires in the Coast Range. The muck that flowed down the rivers suffocated the oyster beds.
The impact was devastating. Where huge colonies of millions of Olympia Oysters once blanketed the tidal areas, there was nothing. The oyster went extinct at Netarts Bay and a small population managed to hang on at Yaquina Bay. At Coos Bay, researchers thought the Olympia oyster was extinct until a small colony was discovered about ten years ago.
The Comeback Story
This part of the story begins about five years ago when the Nature Conservancy, working with the Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery, started reintroducing the native Olympia oyster in Netarts Bay. Money for the project came from NOAA and the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board. The research area belongs to Oregon State University.
It’s hard work. At the Whiskey Creek Hatchery, oysters spawn and produce larvae that attach themselves to discarded shells. When the tide is low, volunteers lug heavy mesh bags to the mud flats, laying them out and building new oyster beds from scratch. They’ve constructed about ten acres of wild oyster beds. While that may not sound like a huge area, Vander Schaaf estimates there are now one to two million Olympia oysters in the bay. That’s a big enough colony for the oysters to start reproducing on their own. In ten years, they should be completely self-sustaining.
The lessons they’re learning here will be used to help restore the populations at Yaquina Bay and Coos Bay in Oregon and Puget Sound and Willapa Bay in Washington.
Benefits To The Environment
Vander Schaaf says the’ve already seen an improvement in water quality at Netarts Bay. He says oyster beds are terrific filter feeders, “sucking in huge amounts of sea water, spitting it out and eating the algae.” A single oyster filters about 25 gallons of water each day.
The reefs provide valuable habitat for other species such as flounder, Dungeness crab and a multitude of other species. Vander Schaaf says the juveniles hide in the nooks and crannies of the reefs, giving them a better shot at surviving into adulthood.
The reefs act as natural buffers that protect estuaries from storm surges and rising sea levels. These are important habitats for young salmon. Vander Schaaf believes oysters can play an important role in helping restore salmon numbers.
As for those oysters you’ve been eating all these years? They may be fresh but they are not native. They are Pacific Oysters that were introduced into the area from Japan after the native species was almost wiped out. Pacific oysters make up the bulk of the commercial harvest except for some small boutique operations. And yes, they provide some ecological benefits. But Vander Schaaf says the native Olympia oyster does a better job.
