Times are challenging for Texas’ oysters
Standing on the lip of a sweep of salt marsh along the edge of Matagorda Bay the final weekend of October, it was hard to know whether to smile, cry or both. Two days of hard northerly wind behind autumn’s first for-real cool front had shoved water out of Texas bays and into the Gulf, dropping tides as much as two feet below normal in some areas.
The dramatic drop in bay water level, a phenomenon common in the wake strong cold fronts, had drained the marsh’s shallow flats and ponds. About the only water remaining was thin ribbons marking narrow channels veining the estuary.
This revealed a massive matrix of mud and mollusks in this salt marsh. Sheets and ridges and strings of oysters poked from the mucky bottom, and acres of them unveiled by the abnormally low tide stood in the bright autumn sunlight.
On, around and over the oysters, swarms of wading birds — roseate spoonbills, ibis, herons and egrets — and gulls hunted. Some poked their bills into the mud among the sheets of shell, dining on a buffet of marine worms, small crabs or other invertebrates that thrive in the protection and habitat provided by the oysters. Other birds plundered shallow pools, where small fish stranded by the falling tide made easy meals.
Even the exposed oysters themselves were not immune from the avian onslaught. Here and there, aptly named American oystercatchers used their stout, fluorescent red/ orange bills to pry at small oysters or the black mussels that coexist with the larger mollusks, hoping to wedge open a shell and devour the soft, fleshy, delicious animal inside. Foundation to life
The scene spoke to how crucial oysters are to a healthy, vibrant bay system. Oyster reefs, especially intertidal reefs such as the one before me, are foundational to estuarine life.
The mollusks filter bay water and soften wave action, creating conditions conducive to growth of marine vegetation. Healthy and hearty reefs of oysters in their calcium carbonate shells also provide strong, effective natural bulwarks that blunt storm surge. They create habitat for a stunning variety of marine life including marine worms, several species of crabs, shrimp and dozens of marine finfish species; oyster reefs have a higher diversity and concentration of marine life than even estuarine marsh.
Recent research estimates the value of the ecological services that intertidal oyster reefs provide at as much as $244,000 per acre.
Texas oysters have other value, of course. They are a delicious shellfish, fueling a multimillion-dollar commercial fishery and a small but passionate recreational fishery.
Thinking of that recreational fishery was one of the reasons for more than a bit of melancholy that mixed with the pleasure of witnessing the swirl of life tied to these intertidal oyster reefs. Limits on harvest
In past years, I would have been eyeing the expanse of shallow oyster reefs and dreaming of returning on a cold winter day behind a strong front, wearing waders and heavy gloves, and carrying a couple of five-gallon buckets, a chisel and a old claw hammer, aiming to “coon” a bunch of oysters.
Collecting oysters by hand — termed “cooning” by every Texan I’ve met who does it — can be cold, muddy, physical work, what with having to use the hammer and maybe the chisel to break clumps of the mollusks from their matrix, slosh them around to wash the mud and sand from them, knock loose the dead shell and undersize (shell less than three inches long) oysters and plop the prizes into the buckets.
But the payoff is three-, four- or maybe five-dozen fresh, plump, delicious oysters that taste of the bay. Raw on the half shell, fried, baked, broiled or simply tossed on a charcoal grill and allowed to steam open — there is no wrong way to eat an oyster. And, for some of us, there are no oysters better or tastier than those we’ve “cooned” ourselves.
But it will be hard, if not impossible, to coon oysters from Texas bay waters this year and certainly for many years to come.
As of Nov. 1, the opening of the six-month oyster season on public reefs in Texas coastal waters, harvesting oysters within 300 feet of a shoreline — mainland or island — is prohibited. So, too, is harvesting oysters anywhere in six shallow bays where oystering has been permitted — Christmas Bay, Carancahua Bay, Powderhorn Lake, Hynes Bay, St. Charles Bay and South Bay. The prohibition applies to commercial and recreational harvest of oysters.
The rule change, which effectively puts almost all waters where recreational “cooning” oysters is possible off limits, is part of several modifications of Texas oyster regulations made this year.
The new rules, some made by statutory changes passed by the 2017 Texas Legislature and some through regulatory changes adopted by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission, are aimed at addressing problems the state’s oyster population faces. And it faces a bunch.
Texas oysters have endured a decade of particularly bad luck.
About 48,000 acres of oyster reefs remain in Texas waters, almost all of them in the Galveston, Matagorda, San Antonio and Aransas bay systems. That acreage, a pittance of the state’s original oyster grounds, remained fairly stable in the 1990s and early 2000s, when the mollusks saw fairly normal reproduction and growth rates despite steady commercial harvest. First punch from Ike
That changed on Sept. 13, 2008. When Hurricane Ike slammed ashore on Bolivar Peninsula, it pushed a wall of silt-laden storm surge over Galveston Bay, smothering at least half of the oyster reefs in the bay system that, at the time, accounted for 90 percent of the state’s oyster harvest.
That forced the commercial oyster harvest to focus on other bays.
In 2010, the Deepwater Horizon tragedy and resulting oil spill off Louisiana caused closure or severe limitation of commercial oystering in all Gulf states except Texas. This steeply increased oyster harvest on the state’s public reefs.
Drought was next. Record-setting drought that peaked in 2011 saw salinity levels in bays rise to as much as three times normal. That allowed a pair of oyster predators — a snail known as an oyster drill and a parasite called dermo — that thrive only in high-salinity water to invade oyster reefs with devastating results.
Then came the floods. Record-setting floods in 2015 and 2016 swamped bays with freshwater. Oysters can survive brief inundations of freshwater but die when salinity levels drop below about 2 parts per thousand for a couple of weeks. That happened in 2015 and again in ’16.
With many open-water public reefs closed because of too few legal oysters on them, this past oyster season saw commercial oystering move into areas — shallow bays and along shorelines — previously lightly harvested if touched at all. That move of commercial oystering into small, shallow bays triggered a considerable public outcry to protect those previously lightly harvested areas and the ecologically priceless oysters in them.
The result was passage by the 2017 Texas Legislature of laws tightening licensing rules for commercial oyster fishers and increasing penalties for violations. In late August, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission adopted staff-recommended regulation changes reducing the daily limit of oysters for commercial oyster boats and the allowable amount of undersized oysters in that catch and prohibited commercial harvest of oysters on Saturdays. (Commercial harvest already was prohibited on Sundays.)
The rules also included closing the six minor bays and all water within 300 feet of a shoreline to all harvest of oysters.
Two days after the TPW Commission passed the rule changes, Hurricane Harvey hit Texas. And Texas oysters took another major punch. Record flooding from Harvey sent unprecedented amounts of freshwater into Texas bays. The result was significant mortality of oysters. Estimates of oyster mortality on reefs in East Galveston Bay range from 50 to 100 percent, said Lance Robinson, deputy director of Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s coastal fisheries division. An estimated 63 percent of oysters on the west side of Galveston Bay died from Harvey’s freshwater, and 18 to 44 percent were lost in mid-bay reefs, Robinson said. No estimates are yet available for oyster losses in other bays.
Texas bays hold 34 shellfish harvesting areas, sections of bays where harvest of oysters from public reefs can be allowed. When the 2017-18 oyster season began Nov. 1, only 14 of those areas were designated as open. The remaining 20 were closed because of low numbers of harvestable oysters. More areas could be — and probably will be — closed during the season if sampling determines the number of legal oysters drops below a benchmark level. Chance to bounce back
Oysters are amazingly resilient creatures, something they have learned over the 350 million years or so the mollusks have been around. With favorable environmental conditions, a couple of good spawns (oysters spawn in spring and autumn) and a good supply of oyster shells and other hard substrate to which the young oyster “spat” can attach, they can rebound in the two to three years it takes for an oyster to grow to maturity. If they are left alone.
The changes in Texas oyster fishing laws are aimed at giving them that chance.
Losing the opportunity to wade and wallow around in the muddy shallows of a Texas bay on a winter day, “cooning” a couple of buckets of handsize oysters and enjoying them that evening with family and friends seems to be a cost of giving them that opportunity.
If it means Texas bays will have more oysters in them, it is a cost many of us would, grudgingly and with no little sadness, pay.