The Baltimore Oyster Partnership, a collaboration between the Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF), is working to grow 5 million oysters in the Baltimore Harbor by 2030.
The Partnership aims to restore the ecosystem of the Harbor and the greater Chesapeake Bay by restoring depleted oyster populations. The project engages volunteers’ assistance in the installation and maintenance of 16 oyster gardens across the Baltimore Harbor. The gardens house over 1,000 cages of newly grown oyster larvae that are taken to a no-harvest sanctuary reef in the Patapsaco River.
The project leverages oysters’ natural behavior by growing new oyster larvae on the shells of recycled oysters. “Its favorite place to settle is on a shell of another oyster,” Adam Lindquist, the Vice President of the Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore, says of oyster larvae. “So shell recycling is critical to the restoration process. We don’t want to see shells ending up in landfills because they’re really valuable for future oysters.”
The Baltimore Oyster Partnership engages multiple entities at each step of its “Plate to Reef” process. Participating restaurants recycle their oyster shells. The Oyster Recovery Partnership (ORP) then collects and delivers them to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation team, who plant new larvae in the shells. The Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore picks up the newly planted spat, or baby larvae, and transports them to sanctuary reefs in the Harbor.
Across a three-day Oyster Fest in September, a Baltimore restaurant group recycled roughly 80 bushels of shells—enough to plant nearly 400,000 oyster spat. Samantha Hofherr, Director of Operations at Kooper’s Tavern at Slàinte Irish Pub, explains that participating in oyster shell recycling felt like a “responsibility” to give back to the Bay. “Once we understood how important shells are for rebuilding reefs, we knew we had to be part of the effort,” Hofherr tells Food Tank.
A study in the Marine Ecology Progress Series (MEPS) Journal finds that oyster reef sanctuaries in the Chesapeake Bay are home to more marine life diversity than harvest reefs. According to Lindquist, there is anecdotal evidence of this in the Harbor. Reefs become colonized by small sea creatures that attract larger predators like striped bass, also known as rockfish—a Baltimore seafood staple. “The oysters play a role in bringing those rockfish to our waters,” Lindquist tells Food Tank. “I think we’re basically rebuilding the food web, and oysters are a key species in that.”
Oysters are a keystone species and critical to habitat restoration, according to the Coastal Conservation Association of Maryland. Dan Taylor, the President of the Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore, tells Food Tank that while many people think of oysters simply as food, they are also the “workhorses” of marine life. Their filtration abilities once allowed the Bay’s oyster population to filter all the water every three or four days, according to the Chesapeake Bay Program.
Now, the Chesapeake Bay’s oyster populations are only at about 1 to 2 percent of historical levels due to disease, pollution, habitat loss, and overharvesting, according to NOAA Fisheries—taking a year to filter the same volume of water.
But Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Baltimore Oyster Restoration Coordinator Morgan Shapiro says large-scale restoration investments are gaining momentum. Maryland oyster populations have tripled since 2006 she says. “It’s critically important that we keep this momentum and continue getting more oysters in the Bay, not only to help clean the water but to support diverse ecosystems.”
Now in its 13th season of oyster gardening, the Partnership has scaled up each year. With the support of the Baltimore Ravens, it is planting 1 million oysters annually and working towards its 5 million-oyster goal.
This goal is part of a bigger mission to make the Harbor safe and stigma-free for recreation. “I sought to create engagement programs to get the people of Baltimore to invest in the Harbor and understand it as a living, breathing ecosystem,” Lindquist tells Food Tank.
And Taylor and Lindquist say the project’s continued success relies heavily on strong community engagement. Volunteer oyster gardeners can construct and scrub oyster cages and help relocate oyster spat to their new homes. For Shapiro, turning action into advocacy is the heart of the program: “If we don’t give people a chance to participate in our restoration work, how do we expect them to understand and care about it?”
Restaurant guests also enjoy learning about the restoration work and “knowing they’re contributing,” Hofherr says. She wants other restaurant owners to know that shell recycling is worth it. “Shell recycling folds right into normal kitchen operations, and every bushel counts.”
And diners discover that conservation and consumption can go hand-in-hand. “For every oyster you eat, it could become home to a dozen more baby oysters,” Lindquist tells Food Tank.
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Photo courtesy of the Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore
