Now for a bit of good news - and from an environmental group at
that. Drew Koslow, the Choptank Riverkeeper, reports that while
walking the shore of Harris Creek in Talbot County, he saw an
"amazing" abundance of oysters growing in the intertidal zone,
inundated by water at high tide but exposed to the air at ebb.
"You literally couldn't take a step without walking on oysters,"
Koslow said in a recent release by the Mid-Shore Riverkeeper
Conservancy. "In my four years as the Choptank Riverkeeper, I
have never seen spatfall density like there is in Harris Creek."
Harris Creek, on the east side of Tilghman Island near the mouth
of the Choptank River, is the focus of a state and federal
effort to restore oysters to a corner of the Chesapeake Bay. The
estuary once brimmed with the shellfish, but disease, pollution
and overharvesting reduced the population to barely one percent
of historic levels. Oysters are a key to the bay's health. Not
just tasty to eat, they help filter the bay's waters, and their
depletion c