Will Asian Oysters Help or Harm Chesapeake Bay? Oysters were
once so abundant in Chesapeake Bay that ships found it hard to
navigate around the huge oyster reefs that filled the waters.
For hundreds of years, Chesapeake residents -- both human and
animal -- benefited from this bounty. The oysters' plentiful
numbers and natural filtering ability helped keep the waters
clear, and thousands of watermen made a living fishing for
oysters. The Chesapeake oyster industry provided jobs to many in
bay communities, shipping catches to markets and restaurants
around the country. As recently as 1980, in fact, the Chesapeake
yielded about half of the U.S. oyster harvest. But today the
oysters you encounter at a raw bar or at the supermarket are far
more likely to come from the Gulf of Mexico or the Pacific
Northwest than the Chesapeake. Decimated by parasitic diseases,
overfishing, and a decline in water quality, Chesapeake oysters
now make up no more than 5 percent of the U.S. harvest. As the
oysters have dwindled, so ha