Mobile Bay Blog

From Press Register: 

By Ben Raines

March 03, 2010, 9:01AM

MOBILE, Ala. -- An ambitious plan to relocate 6 million pounds of oysters from the upper half of Mobile Bay to create a new, 800-acre public reef farther south will begin March 15, officials announced Tuesday in Bayou La Batre.

Oystermen said the program would save their livelihood -- devastated since Hurricane Katrina by a rapacious marine conch known as the oyster drill and by the opposing forces of drought and excessive rainfall.

Beginning March 15, most of the 200 boats licensed to harvest oysters in Alabama waters are expected to begin tonging on a long-closed reef near the mouth of Fowl River on Mobile Bay. Oysters will be deposited on barges, then hauled south to the new reef site, a 3-mile stretch halfway between Fowl River and Alabama Point.

The Fowl River reef was closed more than 25 years ago because of water quality concerns. Testing in the 1990s found elevated levels of certain contaminants in oyster meat from the upper bay, particularly DDT.

"Previously, all the waters north of Fowl River were classified as prohibited, meaning no one could harvest there. After a yearlong process working with the FDA and the Alabama Department of Health, this area was reclassified," said John Mareska, a biologist the Division of Marine Resources. "The oyster tissue has been tested for heavy metals and other contaminants, and they were below action levels."

Mareska said the problematic contaminants around Fowl River today have more to do with bacteria associated with sewage instead of industrial pollutants. That means oysters there can be moved to open water farther south, allowed to "cleanse themselves" for 21 days, then harvested.

Oystermen will be paid $11 per tub of oysters they tong up. A tub typically weighs about 60 pounds and contains what would be about six pints of shucked oysters. The money comes from an emergency disaster relief program associated with Hurricane Katrina, which struck nearly five years ago.

"It's federal money," Mareska said, adding that state officials will be on hand to ensure the Fowl River reef is not completely depleted.

Avery Bates, who often speaks for the state's oystering fleet, said the new reef would allow Alabama's oystermen to come home.

"Our guys have been having to work in other states to earn a living. Our reefs have all been closed, essentially since Katrina," Bates said. "This is a way to help the farmers of the sea stay in business."

Bates pointed to the oyster drill as the primary problem with the Cedar Point reefs that surround the Dauphin Island bridge.

Prolonged drought, coupled with other environmental changes, allowed the saltwater drills to proliferate unchecked for several years. Typically, large amounts of fresh water washes into the bay in the spring, killing most of the drills.

The new reef site maintains lower salinity levels year-round, hopefully mitigating the drill problem.

In the end, it was nearly impossible to find a live oyster on the state's largest and most productive reef. Bates said the reefs left in the bay today represent a fraction of what was there in 1910.

"The washing away of the barrier islands, the ship channel going from 35 feet to 50 feet, the changing of salinity due to Georgia and Alabama holding back so much water in the dams -- all those things have meant more saltwater in the bay, which allowed the drills to thrive over the years," Bates said. "Now, we're worried about all the fresh water we've had. Too much fresh water can kill the oysters themselves."