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Hard Times for Tampa Bay Oysters
by Robin Lewis
Things are bad for oysters all over.
This past November United Press International reported that "Maryland officials expect a record low Chesapeake oyster harvest thanks to drought and disease…Last year's catch of 53,000 bushels was a fraction of the 2.5 million bushels that were landed as recently as the early 1980s…Our estimate is 20,000 to 25,000 bushels, at most… this year."
Working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Dr. Mike Marshall and I have tried to restore an oyster reef protecting tiny Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge (2.7 acres) near Sebastian on Florida's east coast. While the reef material, delivered by helicopter, is protecting the once-eroding island, settling oysters only survive for six months or so.
But there was a time, just 30 years ago in Tampa Bay, when I would lead tours of Cockroach Bay in an attempt to promote seagrass protection and water quality improvements. My target audience was mostly adults, county commissioners and business leaders including members of the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce Environmental Committee. I knew they would be impressed by actually seeing and tasting oysters produced in a nearly pristine part of the bay with a lousy name for PR purposes. It was a very successful effort, and along with Dorothea Cole (now Zysko) and Fred Webb of Hillsborough Community College's Environmental Studies Program, we would carefully motor to Hole-in-the-Wall Pass, crack open a few oysters, break out the hot sauce and saltines, and subtly - and not-so-subtly - push hard for political support to up the level of protection.
Then a routine sampling of the oysters by the former Florida Marine Research Lab turned up E. coli in levels unsafe for human consumption. So our eating tours stopped. Naively thinking I could change the world, I immediately set about helping to find the source of contamination and see that it was cleaned up. My investigation targeted the Hawaiian Isles mobile home park at the head of the bay, and surrounding homes and businesses with septic tanks. I solicited the help of FMRL and the Environmental Protection Commission of Hillsborough County.
Unfortunately, after much hard work that included some public hearings on shellfish management in the God-forsaken backwaters of northern Florida, I learned that FMRL and their shellfisheries staff almost never monitored sources of contamination or took action to clean up and reopen closed areas, unless there was a significant commercial fishery. This was certainly not the case for Cockroach Bay. I pushed; they refused to help, citing "staff shortages." So the area has been closed for all these years, and no one is seeking its reopening, to my knowledge.
So you might say, so what. Well, oysters are in trouble in Tampa Bay. We just don't know how bad the problem is. I have watched reefs shrink in some locations. Old Tampa Bay's once-large commercial oyster harvests are now long gone. Maybe the oyster reefs appear okay in other areas, but we're not monitoring for disease and they could be slowly declining. Who knows? Human pathogens have recently been implicated in diseases that kill corals. Maybe they are playing the same role in oysters.
Are oysters the "canary in the coal mine" for subtle water quality declines due to human pathogens and reduced freshwater flows in Tampa Bay? I think it deserves some serious attention.
I may never eat another oyster from Hole-in-the-Wall Pass, but those oyster reefs can still provide good habitat for hundreds of fish and invertebrate species, including juvenile and adult redfish. But they have to stay healthy. How healthy are our existing oyster populations in Tampa Bay? What areas have been lost, and what areas are stable and expanding? We need answers to those questions as soon as possible.
- Long-time bay advocate Robin Lewis is president of Lewis Environmental Services and a member of the Bay Soundings editorial advisory committee.
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