Oyster shells belonging to Pacific Seafood in South Bend are being shipped across the U.S. in aid of oyster reef restoration in Chesapeake Bay. Willapa oyster shells are plentiful, in part because of loss of oyster beds to destructive burrowing shrimp.

In the wild or in a hatchery, on East Coast or West, the basic outline of the oyster’s life cycle is as follows:

First, the water warms up and begins to grow dense with nutrients. Then, adult oysters detect this change in their surroundings and release their respective male and female gametes. Fertilized eggs begin to divide and grow into larvae, which swim freely for another week or two. And finally, the larvae find a hard substrate to attach to, where they will mature and spend the rest of their adult lives filtering and feeding from the water around them.

Pull Quote

‘They’re just good people. And I could sit there and have a beer with them until they turn the lights on in the bar.’

Nick Hargrove, Chesapeake Bay oysterman,

speaking about Pacific Seafood’s personnel on Willapa Bay

The hard substrate is critical — not just its presence, but, as oystermen and women will tell you, what it’s made of, too. And they say that the best substrate is oyster shell itself.

In nature, larvae no bigger than a grain of sand will attach to a “mother shell” from the previous generation of oysters. Its grooved and pockmarked surface provides both a structurally secure anchor point and a steady source of calcium for the growing spat.

It’s possible, as some research shows, to use other materials for substrate. But shell shortages still represent a huge potential bottleneck in the shellfish industry. Which is why last month, Oregon-based Pacific Seafood worked with two Maryland seafood companies — Madison Bay Seafood and Wittman Wharf Seafood — to ship 100,000 bushels of oyster shells from South Bend to the Chesapeake Bay.

Here, there is such a surplus that huge quantities of shell are ground up for hiking trails, among other uses. There, Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources projected a 17.5 million-bushel shortfall over the next decade, while the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers experimented with using clam shells and granite as part of state-sponsored, reef-restoration initiatives.

They had a problem, and we had a solution.

Help from the West

When asked how the companies first connected, Ben Krewson, Madison Bay Seafood’s general manager, and Miranda Ries, director of regulatory affairs at Pacific Seafood’s aquaculture division, say the same thing: “luck.”

“They thought, ‘Well we’re gonna start on the West Coast because we haven’t had much luck towards the east or the middle states,’ and Pacific Seafood was the first call they made,” said Ries. “They literally did a Google image search, and said, ‘Oh, there’s a lot of oyster shell!’”

Discovering a solution in the form of Pacific Seafood’s stockpiles may have been serendipitous. But the problem itself was far from a temporary or chance occurrence. Rather, it was the inevitable result of a decades-long series of ecological events and their political and economic consequences.

Starting in the 1980s and continuing into the early 2000s, the Chesapeake Bay’s native oyster population was hit hard by diseases like MSX and Dermo, which led to an overall, drastic reduction in both shell quantity and oyster habitat, as existing reefs silted over. The downstream effect was twofold.

First, many Maryland processing facilities shuttered, leaving Virginia as the primary destination for Maryland oysters. Second, the state initiated large reef-restoration projects with the goal of reviving native oyster habitat and populations.

Both, however, were shell sinks — Virginia, from which shells only return to Maryland if paid for, and Maryland’s own sanctuaries, which ultimately compete for the same limited shell supply as small outfits like Madison Bay and Wittman Wharf while remaining mostly off-limits to harvest.

In Washington, on the other hand, a different political and economic situation means that growers don’t bleed shells like they do in Maryland. According to Ries, “when [Pacific Seafood] buys a load of oysters from a third-party grower, we then give them a load of shell back. We don’t sell the shell back, and it stays primarily in the state.

So — get a load, give a load.”

Which is not to say that there aren’t a whole host of other pressures and adaptations, some of which also contribute to an abundance of shells.

As Jenn Allison, plant manager at Pacific Seafood’s South Bend facility explains: “We’ve seen continued losses of oyster ground because of burrowing shrimp. And we also have seen a progression of different methods of cultivating oysters. So we now don’t just grow oysters on the bottom. We also have oysters that are grown in baskets off of the substrate, and long-line oyster culture. And so our dependence on oyster shell has slowed down over time and likely will continue to do so as we lose farmable acres and see other ways to productively farm oysters in estuaries.”

Whereas Willapa’s introduced Japanese oysters are farmed, traditionally by scattering shells on privately owned tidelands, harvesters in Chesapeake Bay still take native East Coast oysters from publicly owned reefs that resemble those originally found in nature.

Common purpose

Different coasts. Different circumstances. Different companies. Luck may have initiated the connection between them. But ultimately, it was a sense of common purpose, culture and identity, born out of a shared experience of never-ending pressure and unpredictability, that cemented the partnership.

For both parties, the deal was certainly never about the money. Pacific Seafood could have sold the shell for more than the nominal fee they charged their East Coast counterparts. As for Nick Hargrove, owner of Wittman Wharf, and his counterparts, they not only financed the permitting and transportation of the shells, but even designed and built a free-hanging conveyor system specifically for the purpose of loading shells onto tractor trailers. All told, Hargrove estimates the project has cost a half-million dollars — a steep price for a company like his.

But there are intangibles. The optimism and gratitude this partnership inspired in the communities that depend on Maryland’s public fisheries. The mutual recognition and respect that the two parties were able to exchange, irrespective of the size difference between their companies and the overall competitiveness of the industry. To hear them tell it, these things were priceless.

“That’s why this project was so close to our heart,” said Allison, herself a fourth-generation shellfish woman. “Because this is for their public fishery, which includes a lot of smaller mom-and-pop oystermen, many of whom are generational oystermen.”

And as far as Hargrove is concerned, Pacific Seafood’s participation was no less than an act of “grace.”

“I mean, I know the size of their company,” he said. “But you wouldn’t know that by talking to Jenn. They’re just good people. And I could sit there and have a beer with them until they turn the lights on in the bar.”