A Waterman Speaks His Mind
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For over 40 years I enjoyed the curious experience of being both a liberal and a waterman on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. No matter which end of my social spectrum I explored, conflict was easy to find. From telling turtle trappers that I wouldn’t buy their small snapping turtle even though it was of legal size, to arguing against reduction of harvest as the go-to tool for “fixing” the Chesapeake with environmentalists. I’ve been in plenty of debates, and I’d like to print a waterman’s perspective, in the hope of incubating some understanding.
The boom and bust nature of the industry, the need to work in all types of weather, repetitive motion and other factors probably ensures a high percentage of addiction issues and unsavory personalities in the ranks. That doesn’t justify the negative opinion and treatment members of the seafood industry can count on from Maryland Democrats. For every greedy, uncaring over harvester I can introduce you to 3 watermen that fully realize their bounty is finite, and nurture and glean is the order of the day.
The truth is many of the arrests you read about for illegal harvesting are the result of watermen tipping off the DNR and turning the cheaters in. Yet in Maryland watermen have been subjected to a bias and prejudice we would never allow to be applied to any religious or racial group.
When pollution from run off created conditions made reproduction all but impossible for rockfish, little was done to address the actual problem, while watermen were forced to endure a complete moratorium on the foundation of their paycheck. Diseases like pfisteria, Vibrio vulnificus , MSX, and Perkinsus marinus - all with characteristics you’d find in a sci-fi novel - wreak havoc in the bay, and the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) insist reduction of harvest by commercial fishermen is the solution, over and over again.
When dermo and MSX devastated the bay’s oyster population in the 80’s it was the watermen that devised a plan to harvest fossilized shell from the upper bay, carry them down the bay where spat set was high but survival rate low, then scoop them up and carry them to less saline water where they were more likely to survive. All this paid for with a self-imposed surcharge on every bushel of oysters sold. It worked, but Paris Glendening and his henchman John Griffin sabotaged the program by failing to apply for the permit needed from US Army Corps of Engineers.
When forced to apply for the permit via lawsuit, the DNR recommended against on the grounds the dredging caused “turbidity.” This precipitated the collapse of the oyster population we still suffer today.
Once again watermen had a progressive idea: power dredge the oyster bars lifting the shell out of the silt, increasing the chances of successful spat set. This was met by extreme opposition from both CBF and the DNR and only a tiny percentage of historical oyster bottom allows this practice. Despite that, it is responsible for most of the oysters harvested in Maryland over the past several years.
Since the first license was required, Maryland’s Commercial fishermen have only asked for a fair share of the Chesapeake Bay’s bounty. The same cannot be said for the sport fishing or aquaculture industries. During the O’Malley era, again with John Griffin’s vindictive architecture, almost all the upper bay’s historic oyster bottom was made sanctuary, closed to commercial activity in the hopes of replacing wild harvest with aquaculture.
Currently the MWA would like a small portion of the upper bay to try a rotational plan where they would close an area, prepare bottom, plant spat, allow the oysters to grow, then open it to harvest by watermen. The MWA’s position is how can it hurt to try and see what works best?
The DNR and the environmental community are not so open minded. The upper bay remains sanctuary despite a complete lack of evidence that it is giving the bay what it needs: Thriving oyster bars.
If we are ever to return to the day when the Speaker of the House of Delegates is from the Eastern Shore or the representative to the US Congress from the 1st district of Maryland is a democrat, or even a reasonable human being, we must respect the historic residents of our beautiful bucolic island.
Common Sense for the Eastern Shore
