The Sun is wrong about Maryland’s oyster rules

Recently, the editorial board of The Baltimore Sun weighed in on the issue of oyster management in the Chesapeake Bay, simultaneously insulting the hard-working men and women of the seafood industry and suggesting that the Maryland Department of Natural Resources is unwilling to protect the oyster (“Dwindling supply of Maryland oysters requires stronger response,” Sept. 17).

As chairman of the Delmarva Fisheries Association, I take issue with both of these positions and several others blithely laid out for the members of Maryland’s General Assembly to devour with their oyster shooters and clam strips.

It does nothing to represent our side, the side that’s busy trying to make a living ensuring city folks have fresh, local seafood for their fundraising fêtes.

For the record, DNR did not “cave” to watermen and seafood processors. They worked with stakeholders from the legislative, scientific, academic, seafood, business and nonprofit community to arrive at a plan to act now to use a multi-pronged strategy to increase the biomass of our iconic bivalve.

We proposed several ways to reduce harvest pressure, one of many stressors to the oyster population, as did others. Ultimately, DNR came up with a plan for the coming season that left no one 100% satisfied.

It’s called compromise.

They are using an adaptive management strategy that will allow them to monitor scientifically what is working and what’s not and then modify their approach until they’ve arrived at a suite of actions that increase the oyster population.

The Sun’s editorial seems designed to urge the legislature to overturn Gov. Larry Hogan’s veto of legislation that even the Capital Gazette found problematic due to the secret meeting component, a seemingly direct violation of Maryland’s Open Meetings Act. To quote their editorial, “this smacks of politics.” Our members are the state’s first conservationists.

We protect our livelihood for the love of our work and the hope that our way of life, so important to our communities and the environmental, economic and cultural fabric of this state, may be preserved for our children and yours.

Robert Newberry, Crumpton