Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
This month it's Oysters, Oysters, Oysters! We're growing them, protecting them, serving
them up and taking poachers down! I'm Karis King this is Access DNR brining you the latest
news here at the Department of Natural Resources!
Thanks for joining us and Happy November! Next month marks the 30th anniversary of Chesapeake
Bay Agreement, an agreement between Bay states and organizations to work together toward
a healthier Chesapeake.
One of the ways Maryland is leading the cause is by rebuilding our native oyster population,
which helps improve water quality and the ecosystem. This year, State and its partners
produced and planted a national-record 1.25 billion baby oysters in Maryland. Check it
out!
In partnership with all of you today we have produced and planted more than, and this is
a measurable result, 1.2 billion oysters this year 750 of them in the Harris Creek Sanctuary.
(Claps)
Now this is the first time that any oyster hatchery in the in the country has produced
more than a billion eastern shore spat in a single production season.
I started growing oysters in Horn Point a long time ago and before Stephan talked about
the oyster roundtable in '93 at that point our production was at about a million or 2
million a year.
Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would get to ten million or a hundred million or
a billion
It just shows what you can do when you get enough people together towards a common goal
that is worth doing and the partnership is the real story here.
What we have done is a true partnership .... If not for the support of Governor O'Malley,
the Oyster Recovery Partnership, Maryland DNR and many many other groups in here I would
not be standing here and I would be trying to defend to the Governor why Horn Point hatchery
should remain open.
One of the great difficulties we always have in communicating to people the results of
our oyster restoration activities is the fact that these things are underwater.
How do you get people excited about a 20 million dollar project that only a handful of people
or Marylanders will get to see. But as you heard Maryland didn't give up on the native
oyster.
And although our fight to restore a thriving oyster population in the Bay is far from over,
we are heading in the right direction; we are finally heading in the right direction.
And our continued commitment to renewing this iconic species, this vital species, has begun
to bring about tangible and real evidence of progress.
That we have turned the corner That the oyster reefs are starting to come
back and hopefully in our own lifetime we wills ee even furth evidence of that if we
continue to do the right things to bring back this resource.
Maryland's delicious oysters are back! In case you missed it, Debbie Reynolds of Waldorf
won the National Oyster Cook-off with her Oyster and Chipotle Grits. Click here to read
more about the event and get her winning recipe!
And with oyster harvesting now in high gear, the Natural Resources Police is ramping up
enforcement to catch poachers who plunder— who harvest in protected sanctuaries, take
oysters that are too small, or take more than allowed. Officers are now equipped with a
new, state-of-the-art weapon ─ M-LINE ─ which features a web of radar units and cameras
that monitor 24-hrs a day. Learn more here.
That's it for this episode. If you want to stay updated on everything here at the department,
then be sure to subscribe to DNR on twitter, facebook and the original newsletter. Thanks
for joining and see you next month!