In another step to salvage the struggling oyster population in the Chesapeake Bay, a nonprofit group announced today that is has partnered with area restaurants, caterers and others to collect the shells and reuse them.
The users will hand over buckets of their empty shells to the Oyster Recovery Partnership, which will clean them, fill them with new oyster larvae called spat and place them back in the bay about a year later.
“For every oyster you enjoy, we can put back 10,” said Stephan Abel, executive director of the partnership, during a press conference at the Oceanaire restaurant in Harbor East. “Every shell counts.”
That restaurant is one of 21 restaurants and caterers participating in the program, which launched about 16 months ago as a pilot and Thursday officially became the Oyster Shell Recycling Alliance.
Maryland once supplied the world with oysters, but last year produced less than 200,000 bushels, or about 1 percent of the amount collected in the heyday more than a century ago.
The Oyster Recovery Partnership is working with the state and federal agencies, the University of Maryland, volunteers, watermen and others to bolster the population by creating recovery areas where oysters can repopulate naturally. And, now, these shells will be added to the effort.
The oysters, the partnership says, serve many purposes in the bay. They provide food, habitat for other marine life, jobs and filtration for the waters.