Restoration Of Mobile Bay's Once Massive Oyster Colonies Stumbles Over Realities Of A Century Of Destruction

[hatrack]

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Oysters have a profound historical significance. They have been around for 15 million years, breathe like fish, eat algae and each one can filter up to 50 gallons of particulate matter daily from the water column, a reference scientists use to refer to the volume of water extending from the ocean’s surface to the sea floor. A juvenile, or spat, becomes an adult in about two years and can live for 20. As generations grow and fuse on top of one another, they become the archivists of coastal waters. Much like tree rings, the rings on oyster shells document past climate conditions. Oysters paint a portrait of their landscape, a living memory of the seasons. Oysters tell the story of a time and place.

The story they tell of Mobile Bay over the past century is one of overharvesting, dredging and mining on the bay’s floor, decimating the oyster population. “We removed all of the oysters before we understood how important they are to the environment,” says Ben Raines, the environmental writer, author and documentary filmmaker. “Most people don’t understand how many oysters there used to be. They don’t understand that they are a keystone to holding the estuarine environment together.”

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During the early 20th century, the state allowed dredging—dragging a large metal box behind a boat at any depth to scrape live oysters off the reef—and destroyed the reefs. From 1946 to 1982, the state also allowed the indiscriminate scraping of the seabed floor of old oysters and clam shells dozens of feet thick, dating back thousands of years, for aggregate material for road construction. The road from Mobile to New Orleans was paved with oyster shells. Those destructive practices, meanwhile, have been compounded by the bay’s lower oxygen content from sewage outfall, agricultural runoff, urban and suburban development and air pollution, all of which fuel algae growth and create a harmful habitat for marine life.

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In 2004, Hurricane Ivan hit the bay, and in 2005, Hurricane Katrina left its destructive path. The catastrophic hurricane created a new pass called Katrina Cut, halving Dauphin Island. As a result of the increased salinity, the oyster population at Cedar Point Reef, the primary oyster harvest grounds in the bay, declined significantly. In 2007, the predatory snail called an oyster drill, which thrives in high salinity, wreaked havoc on the oysters. Then, in 2010, the cut was artificially closed, improving water conditions, but the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (134 million gallons of oil) occurred that year and an estimated 8.3 million oysters were lost, meaning an estimated additional 5.7 million per year were unable to settle and grow, according to the “Coastal Alabama Comprehensive Oyster Restoration Strategy.”

Finally, in 2011, the century-old year-round harvesting was restricted to replenish the population. But by 2018 there weren’t enough young oysters to support an oyster season, according to Chris Blankenship, commissioner of the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (ADCNR), which oversees managing harvest and oyster restoration.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/25122024/mobile-bay-alabama-oyster-population/

[Deuxcents]

1. I'd be careful eating any seafood from that area because even with all this information from this article

The Gulf has not recovered from the massive oil crisis that poured millions on gallons of oil from the Deepwater Horizon rig in 2010. We, as humans, have never learned to respect our oceans, rivers n waterways as it’s always been a dumping ground since forever. I will exclude the Tribal Nations from that broad brush as they have a different philosophy about Mother Earth.