8M oysters planted in Herring Bay
State, nonprofit apply funds from mitigation payment following ship’s grounding near mouth of Patapsco
An Annapolis oyster recovery nonprofit planted 8 million juvenile oysters Wednesday in Herring Bay using funds received in a settlement following the 2022 grounding of the Ever Forward container ship.
The planting kicked off a two-year restoration effort to mitigate damage caused by the Ever Forward veering off course and grounding near the mouth of the Patapsco River, damaging 11.5 acres of a natural oyster bar. The ship’s owner, Evergreen Marine Corp., paid the state $676,000 last year to mitigate the damage.
The Department of Natural Resources contracted with Annapolis-based Oyster Recovery Partnership
to complete the work.
“It’s exciting to kick off another oyster restoration season in Maryland by working with the Oyster Recovery Partnership to add more oysters to Herring Bay,” Natural Resources Secretary Josh Kurtz said in a news release. “The plantings funded by the ship grounding settlement will help bolster the state’s oyster population, which has been increasing in part due to strong spat sets and ongoing restoration. This project will also serve as a good example of how oyster plantings can benefit the ecosystem and the economy since oysters will be added to a protected sanctuary as well as public fishing areas.”
The Evergreen Marine settlement is expected to eventually plant as many as 150 million spat-on-shell on 41 acres of Anne Arundel County waters, including more dumps at Herring Bay, just south of Deal, according to the news release. Approximately 60 million will be
planted on sanctuary reefs, and the rest will be planted on public reefs open to commercial harvests.
Oyster Recovery Partnership also runs the annual Operation Build-a-Reef campaign, which plants spat, or oyster larvae, in the Severn River to help bolster populations. To date, the nonprofit has planted more than 11.5 billion oysters in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, according to the organization.
“ORP is proud to be selected by Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources to help offset the damage done by the Ever Forward in 2022,” said Ward Slacum, executive director of Oyster Recovery Partnership, in the news release. “The eight million oysters ORP planted today will help restore the Bay by filtering water and providing critical habitat for other species.”
The oyster spat came from the oyster hatchery at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science Horn Point Lab in Cambridge, Maryland. The oysters were loaded onto the Poppa Francis planting vessel, transported across the bay and dumped into Herring Bay.
On March 13, 2022, the Ever Forward, a 1,100-foot container ship, got stuck after missing a turn in the Craighill Channel and plowing into shallow waters.
It was later revealed the pilot, Steven Germac, was distracted by his cellphone.
Germac agreed to give up his pilot’s license and never apply for another. The Board of Pilots had no rule banning personal cellphone usage at the time, but it adopted such a policy in January 2023.
After the grounding, Maryland issued an emergency wetlands license that allowed for dredging the shallow bottom around the vessel to refloat it. After several attempts — and the removal of about 500 cargo containers — the Ever Forward was freed on April 17, 2022.