A surprising development in Virginia may presage the end - at least for now - of the debate over whether Asian oysters have any place in the Chesapeake Bay.

On Tuesday, the Virginia Seafood Council abruptly withdrew its request to raise 1.1 million Asian oysters in 11 locations around the bay.  The oysters would have been genetically modified and bred to be sterile, though critics have said there is still at least a slight chance that some would be able to reproduce.

In a statement read at a hearing before the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, Frances W. Porter, the seafood council's executive director, said the group remained "firm in its confidence in the Asian oysters, but we have exhausted our negotiating capabilities with federal and state authorities." 

According to this story by Scott Harper in the Virginian-Pilot, Porter said the council dropped its push for the Asian oyster field trials after "conversations with unnamed state officials over the weekend."

Porter also said the group believed that the Asian oyster would never realize its potential as an aquaculture product, and that Virginia's oyster industry would never be restored to its historic prominence. 

(The statement was sent me by Chuck Epes, spokesman for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, which was outspoken in opposition to the Asian oysters.)

The withdrawal comes on the eve of a conference call scheduled Wednesday between Maryland and Virginia natural resources officials and the Army Corps commander to try to reach agreement on whether even sterilized Asian oysters should have a role in restoring the bay's oysters.    The trio consulted last Friday, without resolution.

Watermen and seafood businesses in both states contend that years of costly efforts to restore the bay's native oysters after decades of devastation by habitat loss and disease have not succeeded.  They have pressed for permission to try Asian oysters, since they have proven to resist the diseases killing off native bivalves.

A four-year scientific study of how to restore the bay's oysters, however, said there were uncertainties about whether the non-native bivalve could be grown in a controlled way that would prevent it from spreading.

Last week, Col. Dionysios Anninos, the Norfolk Corps District commander, informed the two states that he wanted more study of the sterile Asian oysters to settle lingering questions about the risks they would accidentally reproduce and spread, bringing the possibilities of disease or other ecological harm.  The seafood council offered to alter its request to raise Asian oysters to incorporate more research into its "field trials", but federal environmental agencies had lined up against it, and at least one threatened to appeal it to higher levels within the federal bureaucracy.

Maryland officials have opposed using Asian oysters, while Virginia officials said on Friday that they were still reviewing their position.  It wasn't clear whether Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine or his natural resources secretary had come down against the oyster import.  The Virginia Institute of Marine Science, the state-funded fisheries research lab which had pioneered the process of producing the sterile "triploid" Asian oysters, had advised against allowing their commercial cultivation in the bay.