The Maryland Seafood Cooperative has applied for a 31-acre submerged land lease to grow oysters in Herring Bay at the southern end of Anne Arundel County.
This is the first lease proposed for the stretch of open water between Deale and Rose Haven, according to Maryland Aquaculture Director Karl Roscher, though there are leases in the Chesapeake Bay south of Holland Point and leases in the Magothy, Severn, South, West and Rhode rivers.
Of the 7,300 acres of oyster farms in Maryland, 380 are in the county.
The cooperative is seeking to lease 31 acres of submerged land in the south part of the bay. Roscher said that as of May 27 the department had not received any petitions of protest against the proposed lease, #482. The public comment period closes June 15, at which point the department will determine if a public meeting needs to be held and if there are any outstanding concerns that must be addressed before the lease is approved.
Only 10 acres of the leases in Anne Arundel County are water column leases, in which an oyster grower would raise shellfish in a cage or other structure suspended in water.
The cooperative brings together watermen and aquaculturists, member Rob Witt said. It also includes 21 oyster growers, according to its website, with farms around the state. Witt and the cooperative’s President Terry Witt were the first oyster farmers in the state to apply to have their growing operations verified by the Department of Natural Resources for participation in a marketplace that trades in credit for reducing nitrogen and phosphorous pollution, Roscher said.
Grown oysters remove nitrogen and phosphorus, which they use to grow. When they are removed from the bay, growers can get credit for the removal of those pollutants from the ecosystem.
Suzanne Dorsey, assistant Maryland secretary of the environment said as of May 15 the state has certified 700 pounds of nitrogen reduction credits and 88 pounds of phosphorus reduction credits from 11 different growers.
Anne Arundel County Waterman’s Association President Bill Scerbo said the lease in Herring Bay, where wild harvest is prohibited but aquaculture is allowed, can only help. It is an oyster graveyard in the sanctuary, he said, as oysters have died and aren’t being replaced.
The Holland Point oyster bar produces an average of one spat a year for every two bushels of living or dead oysters and shell, according to the state’s 2018 Fall Oyster Survey.
Jesse Illiff of the Arundel Rivers Federation, an environmental advocacy group, said the more oysters the better. The proposed lease does not appear to interfere with underwater grasses mapped in the area by the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences last fall, Illiff said.
“If they start getting a good crop out of that lease, I will be one of their customers,” he said.
