NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- Weathered sticks peek like day-old whiskers out of the murky harbor here, not far offshore from the fuel tank farms, aging factories and highways that line the waterfront.
Easy to mistake for debris, the sticks actually mark the boundaries of dozens of private shellfish beds, where acres of oysters are cultivated on the harbor bottom.
From waters at the western end of Long Island Sound, Connecticut's shellfish "farmers" last year produced 800,000 bushels of oysters -- more than 10 times what Maryland and Virginia watermen took from the Chesapeake Bay.
While Maryland watermen expect slim pickings again when their oyster season opens Thursday, their counterparts in Connecticut expect another bumper crop.
The contrasts are jarring. Since the mid-1980s, microscopic parasites have sharply cut Chesapeake oyster harvests, once the largest in the nation. Yet Connecticut's take has soared since 1987, when it was less than 70,000 bushels.
By 1992, Connecticut ranked second in the nation behind Louisiana in production, and the premium price commanded by "Blue Points," as Long Island Sound oysters are known, yielded $44 million for the harvest, an income second to none.
Why the revival? Favorable water and weather conditions, experts here say, but also a tradition of "farming" the bottom that dates to the 1700s. Add to that a willingness to adopt modern-day mechanization, replacing the traditional, labor-intensive oystering techniques still practiced in Maryland.
Aboard the Columbia, an old Coast Guard buoy tender refitted to dredge oysters, John H. Volk spreads out a map of New Haven harbor to show that much of its bottom is carved into private plots. They are the key to Connecticut's booming industry, explains Mr. Volk, the state aquaculture director. "If it's a piece of ground you can call your own, you're willing to maintain it. Without aquaculture, we wouldn't have oysters."
Maryland has never had a strong tradition of aquaculture. Though the state has set aside 10,000 acres of bay bottom for lease to raise oysters, only about 1,000 acres are used. And those private beds have not been spared by MSX and Dermo, the parasites that have ravaged 200,000 acres of public oyster bars.
The Oyster Recovery Partnership, a new nonprofit group seeking to revive the Maryland industry, sees possible lessons in the way Connecticut oyster beds are tended. MSX and Dermo never have gained more than a toehold here.
"This may have applicability to Chesapeake Bay," said Dennis T. Walsh, aquaculture consultant to the group, which brings together watermen, environmentalists, scientists and government officials. Mr. Walsh and others from the Annapolis-based organization visited Connecticut last month.
They found an industry dominated by a single company, Tallmadge Brothers Inc. of Norwalk, which fields a fleet of 22 vessels to tend 20,000 acres of oyster grounds in the sound that the company owns or leases from the state.
Hillard Bloom, the owner of Tallmadge Brothers, has built a small family business into "the Cadillac of the oyster industry," says Terry Backer, known as the "Soundkeeper" because he heads a nonprofit group of that name which fights pollution in Long Island Sound.
Mr. Bloom, son of a plumber, paints himself as more of a survivor than a visionary who has built a shellfish empire worth millions.
"In the 1950s, most of the oyster companies went pretty well out," he recalls. "We jumped into clamming, and it saved us." As the other oyster companies folded, Mr. Bloom bought their docks and oyster grounds. He also mechanized the business, buying and refitting an old ferryboat, the Coast Guard tender and other vessels.
Rich maritime heritage
About 150 miles long and 18 miles at its widest, Long Island Sound is roughly the same size as the Chesapeake but is deeper and colder. Only the western end is estuarine like the bay, with fresh water from rivers diluting the salty influence of the Atlantic Ocean. Oysters grow best in those western waters.
Connecticut has a maritime heritage as rich as Maryland's, and oysters have been an important part of the state's history. Among the first laws passed in the 1700s were restrictions on harvesting oysters from the beaches. Eventually, a fleet of 400 sailing sloops plied the sound's waters harvesting oysters.
By the early 1800s, the beds closest to shore had been wiped out by over-harvesting, and Chesapeake oysters were imported as replacements, especially in the New Haven area. The crisis prompted some Connecticut watermen to experiment; they spread shells on the bottom to catch newly spawned oysters settling down through the water. (Young oysters begin life as tiny swimmers but need to attach to a hard surface to grow their shells.)
The experiment proved successful. And towns began issuing grants giving individuals or families exclusive rights to raise oysters on 2-acre patches. By the late 1800s, inshore waters had been mostly doled out, and the state established a shellfish commission to parcel out bottom in the deeper waters of the sound.
Today, about 38,500 acres are franchised or leased, while 4,000 acres are kept for public use under state control.
In the heyday of the industry, before the turn of the century, 88,000 acres of bottom were cultivated, and Connecticut oystermen produced 2.5 million bushels a year. But pollution closed many oyster beds as the region became more industrialized. After World War II, the industry went into a steep decline, hastened by an influx of oyster predators -- starfish and snail-like animals called drills.
"In the 1950s and 1960s, you'd have to go some to find oysters, even in the creeks," says Dave Hopp, a veteran captain for Tallmadge.
Preparing the beds
Oyster beds are prepared by removing debris. Tallmadge uses two large boats equipped with suction dredges, which work much like underwater vacuum cleaners and get right down to the gravelly bottom.
One day recently, old oyster shells, a few large oysters, starfish galore, crabs, conchs and even a few flounder tumbled aboard the Islander, a 90-foot ferryboat converted by Tallmadge to dredge work. The boat, which can hold up to 3,000 bushels of shells, ferries its cargo to the dock at New Haven, where it is deposited on land to dry out. A small mountain of shells already sits on the dock.
In late spring and early summer, as oysters begin to spawn, the shells will be re-planted, to catch the newly spawned oysters, or spat, as they settle to the bottom. Timing is critical, explains Steve Fleetwood, another Tallmadge employee: The shells will become fouled with mud and debris if they sit too long on the bottom before young oysters settle.
Starfish are a continuing problem, however, and other Tallmadge boats are used to "mop" the beds clean of them. A metal frame holding a row of long, string-like mops is pulled across the beds, snagging the spiny outer skin of the starfish. The mops are pulled back on board, loaded with starfish, and dipped in scalding water to kill them. The dead starfish are then washed overboard, where they feed fish and sea gulls.
Unlike Pacific Coast oysters, many of which are spawned in zTC hatcheries, Connecticut oysters come "naturally." Anywhere from 6,000 to 8,000 young oysters settle per bushel of shell on Tallmadge's carefully maintained beds, Mr. Bloom says. That far outshines the "spat set" rate for the Chesapeake, where the new oysters are measured by the hundreds, not thousands.
Connecticut's oyster recovery was gradual until the late 1980s, when the state decided to restore the public oyster beds. Shells dredged from Chesapeake Bay were used; they were barged up the coast and planted in shallow areas that once had produced oysters.
Connecticut's overall success has helped at least one Maryland oyster company. W. H. Harris seafood at Kent Narrows, has been shucking oysters bought from Tallmadge for the past five years. With local oysters scarce, "Connecticut has been sustaining this house," says Karen Oertel, one of Harris' owners.
According to the National Marine Fisheries Service, the Chesapeake Bay now ranks a distant fourth in regional oyster production, behind the Gulf Coast, led by Louisiana; Long Island Sound; and the Pacific Northwest.
Connecticut is no shellfish paradise, to be sure. Long Island Sound has the same pollution woes as the Chesapeake; the governors of Connecticut and New York and the Environmental Protection Agency just signed a compact to reduce nutrients entering the sound.
"We've got serious problems," says Mr. Backer, the "Soundkeeper." For example, recently restored public oyster beds are starting to lose some of their productivity, because of storms and the lack of maintenance given to private beds. But Mr. Backer adds: "We're making headway."
Though Connecticut's oyster industry is dominated by a single company, there still is room for the small entrepreneur, someone with a boat and hand tongs who can gather seed oysters from public bottom and raise them for sale on his own leased patch of the sound.
Could it work here?
"I think you could do the same thing [in the Chesapeake] as we've done here," Mr. Bloom says. "You've just got to spend a little time on it."
The Maryland Oyster Recovery Partnership is considering the cultivation techniques used in Connecticut, but watermen's resistance to expanding private property rights in the bay precludes the extensive aquaculture seen in Long Island Sound, at least for now.
Maryland Department of Natural Resources officials are looking into leasing or outfitting some kind of vessel with a dredge that could remove oyster shells from bay beds.
But Dennis Walsh, the consultant to the Maryland partnership, points out that no one knows whether Connecticut's cultivation techniques will work against the Chesapeake oyster's major nemesis, Dermo, the microscopic parasite that has spread throughout most of the bay.
With oyster harvests in the bay slumping lower every year, though, many in Maryland are willing to try emulating Connecticut's methods. Larry W. Simns, president of the Maryland Watermen's Association, accompanied the delegation that visited the state last month.
"Who knows?" Mr. Simns replied when asked if Connecticut's methods would work in Maryland. "It's worth a try. Anything's worth a try."