State moves to give oysters breathing room
The fate of Texas’s oysters in the wake of Hurricane Harvey seems an insignificant sidelight to the devastation being wrought by the storm.
But the storm’s potential negative effects on these primitive mollusks crucial to bay ecosystems, the state’s multibilliondollar recreational fishery and multimilliondollar commercial fishery press home the reasoning and urgency behind actions coincidentally taken as Harvey percolated in the Gulf.
Last Thursday, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission adopted a package of changes in regulations governing the harvest of oysters, tightening rules governing commercial take and closing approximately 2,900 acres of the state’s 48,000 acres of oyster habitat to all oyster harvest, commercial and recreational.
The changes, which will become effective before the Nov. 1 opening of the annual six-month season for harvest of oysters from public reefs, were precipitated by a series of blows — of which Hurricane Harvey appears to be latest — that have the state’s oyster resources reeling.
That cascade began with a hurricane.
When Hurricane Ike swept ashore in September 2008, the silt-laden storm surge smothered at least half of the public oyster reefs in Galveston Bay — reefs made more vulnerable to such silt-caused suffocation because they had been so heavily harvested by commercial dredging that they had little elevation above the bay floor.
Deprived of Galveston Bay’s oysters, which had accounted for about 90 percent of the state’s annual commercial oyster harvest, the highly mobile fleet of commercial oyster boats fanned out along the coast to rake live oysters from reefs in bays along the middle coast.
Oil spill, then drought
That pressure on Texas oysters significantly increased in 2010 when the effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill shut down commercial oystering from Louisiana to Florida, driving up the demand for Texas oysters.
Then came a four-year, record-setting drought that shriveled Texas’ rivers, reducing freshwater inflows into the bays and causing salinity levels in the bays to spike. Oyster parasites and predators that thrive only in the high-salinity water devastated live oyster reefs.
The drought was followed by record-setting wet years in 2015 and 2016 during which flooding rivers poured into the bays, swamping oyster reefs with freshwater and causing a failure of the mollusks’ spring spawn. In some bays, those freshwater inundations lasted for months, killing adult oysters that can survive only a couple of weeks or so in freshwater.
While the oyster stocks were reeling from the natural disasters, commercial oyster harvest relentlessly continued. That commercial harvest was focused narrower and narrower as Texas Parks and Wildlife Department closed area after area to harvest because overharvest had stripped the reefs of mature oysters. More than 60 percent of Texas’ public oyster areas were closed to harvest before the end of the 2016-17 season.
Violations of the state’s rule allowing no more than 15 percent dead oyster shells or under-sized (less than 3-inch shell length) oysters in a “sack’ (110 pounds) increased, with state game wardens citing some commercial boats that had cargos holding as much as 90 percent under-sized oysters.
Deprived of their normal open-water public reefs, some commercial oyster operations moved to hit shallow oyster reefs along shorelines and in shallow secondary bays — areas seldom commercially harvested and holding the most ecologically valuable oyster reefs.
The plunder of those shallow-water reefs last season, especially those in Christmas Bay, a small lobe of the Galveston Bay complex and a hugely important and rich estuary, triggered outcry from recreational anglers and conservation groups appalled by the damage being done to the shallow reefs and the surrounding marsh.
Legislation necessary
The cumulative effects of the decade of natural and human-caused erosion of Texas’ oyster stock resulted earlier this year in legislation significantly increasing penalties for commercial violations of oyster regulations and implementing a license buy-back program aimed at reducing the number of commercial oyster boats operating on Texas bays. (Texas imposed limited-entry rules for the oyster fishery in 2005, capping oyster licenses at then-current levels — 557 commercial oyster boat licenses and 465 oyster boat captain licenses.)
To further protect, enhance and help ensure a sustainable oyster resource, TPWD coastal fisheries staff drafted a package of proposed regulation changes. Those changes included reducing commercial oyster fishing from six days per week during the season to five days, reducing the maximum daily commercial harvest from 40 sacks to 25 sacks, dropping the allowable percentage of under-sized oysters from 15 percent to 5 percent, closing seven minor/secondary bays to all oyster harvest and prohibiting any harvest of oysters within 300 feet of shore.
Those proposals drew almost 1,500 comments from the public, Lance Robinson, deputy director of TPWD’s coastal fisheries division, said during a briefing on the proposal at the TPW Commission hearing last Thursday. The overwhelming majority (80 percent) of those comments were in support of the proposals. Opposition to the proposals came almost wholly from commercial oyster fishers, with their opposition hinging on the reduction in the percentage of under-size oysters allowed to be included in their take.
At Thursday’s hearing, more than a dozen Texans who identified themselves as recreational anglers, members or representatives of conservation groups (and often as both) spoke in support of the proposals.
Supporters of the proposal included State Rep. Dennis Bonnen, RAngleton, whose district includes Christmas Bay. In a written statement to the TPW Commission, Bonnen characterized the plundering of Christmas Bay oyster reefs as a “travesty” and said “I fear we are at a critical point” in determining the fate of the state’s “vital” oyster resources.
In particular, supporters of the proposals said, protection of shallow-water oyster reefs is crucial to the continued health of the mollusks and the assemblage of marine life dependent on them.
Intertidal reefs key
Those intertidal reefs, said Dr. Greg Stunz of Texas A&M-Corpus Christi’s Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, are “foundational species,” providing a habitat complex more rich and productive than any other shallow-water marine habitat and more disease resistant than deep-water oyster reefs.
“Science clearly shows this is the way forward,” Stunz told the commission.
The nine-member TPW Commission agreed, adopting a package of regulations slightly modified from the original proposal.
The adopted regulations include closing commercial oyster fishing on Saturdays (commercial harvest will be closed Saturday and Sunday, beginning with the 2017-18 oyster season), reducing the daily harvest limit per boat from 40 sacks to 30 sacks and reducing the allowable amount of under-size oysters from 15 percent to 5 percent.
The adopted rules also prohibit all harvest (commercial or recreational) of oysters within 300 feet of shore and close six minor/ secondary bays to all oyster harvest. Beginning with the Nov. 1 start of the 2017-18 oyster season, oyster harvest will be prohibited in Christmas Bay, Carancahua Bay, Powderhorn Lake, Hynes Bay, St. Charles Bay and South Bay.
The closures affects about 6 percent of the state’s oyster habitat, Robinson said.
The changes are designed to give Texas’ oysters a bit of breathing room. They need it. And they almost willl certainly need it even more in the wake of Harvey.
The storm surge is almost certain to silt over reefs in places such as Copano, Aransas, Espiritu Santo and Matagorda bays, — where reefs are worn down by relentless dredging over the last several years.
Then there is the freshwater runoff from Harvey’s flooding rain. Those rains could be a combination punch to oysters, swamping the bays with freshwater that could disrupt oysters’ secondary “autumn” spawn and certainly could threaten their very lives if the freshwater holds in the bays for weeks.
The only break Texas oysters seem to have gotten in the last decade came last week when the TPW Commission voted unanimously to adopt the new restrictions on oyster harvest.