When Alabama officials called a one-year halt to the oyster harvest on Mobile Bay in late 2018, it was a shocking sign of how far the fishery had fallen. Now counterparts in Florida have moved to shut down Apalachicola Bay for the next five years.
On Wednesday, members of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission approved a draft rule that establishes a five-year ban on the bay, located off the Panhandle spur southwest of Tallahassee. The rule specifies that through Dec. 31, 2025, commercial and recreational oystering is prohibited in the area. Anyone found to be in possession of an oyster or of oyster tongs on the bay will be in violation of the restrictions.
The policy change applies only to wild oysters, not to commercial oyster farming operations.
A summary memo considered by commissioners laid out a fishery collapse that has, so far, resisted corrective measures:
“Historically, Apalachicola Bay (Bay) supported an expansive oyster reef ecosystem. It was once considered the healthiest in the nation and has supported a culturally important, iconic fishery since the mid-1800s. Prior to 2012, more than 90% of Florida’s, and approximately 10% of the nation’s, wild oyster harvest came from in the Bay. Harvest dropped dramatically beginning in 2013, leading the U.S. Department of Commerce to declare a federal fisheries disaster for Florida’s oyster industry.
Since 2013, FWC has taken a number of actions to aid in the recovery oysters in the Bay. However, despite management efforts, oyster abundance remains at historic lows and continues to decline every year. Of the thousands of acres of oyster reefs that FWC monitors, only a small portion are producing oysters that survive to adulthood, which negatively impacts reproductive success and natural recovery of the population.
In early 2020, FWC received funding through the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation for large-scale restoration and developing an adaptive oyster management plan for the Bay. Oyster restoration efforts in the Bay are being coordinated alongside several state agencies, universities, industry partners, and the local community. To maximize restoration and oyster recovery, and with support from industry, staff propose suspending all harvest of wild oysters in the Bay and prohibiting possession of wild oyster-harvesting equipment on the water through December 31, 2025. Staff will continue to work with the Apalachicola oyster industry to develop a management plan recognizing the cultural importance of wild oyster harvest and will return to discuss the future of the Apalachicola oyster fishery after restoration is complete.”
The memo also recommends a final hearing on the rule at the commission’s October meeting.
The language describes a oyster fishery crash more severe that on Mobile Bay, a body of water that even in a good year produces a small fraction of the harvest it generated in the early to middle 20th century. In November 2018, Alabama conservation officials ruled there would be no 2018-2019 oyster harvest on the bay, because preliminary surveys showed there simply weren’t enough mature oysters to make it worthwhile.
They hoped the fallow year would facilitate a rebound, and that appeared to happen: In November 2019 officials with the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources’ Marine Resources Division opened a limited season with a modest goal of 7,000 sacks. Fleets of boats hit the water and by the time the season ended in mid-February some 11,258 sacks had been tallied.
Officials said that was the best harvest going back to 2013-14, when about 12,000 sacks were harvested. For Alabama harvest purposes, a sack is 80 to 85 pounds of oysters in the shell, so the latest harvest represented up to about 957,000 pounds of oysters in the shell. As a historical comparison, the annual Mobile Bay harvest in the 1950s averaged more than a million pounds of oyster meat. Those harvests were the product of the thriving, widespread reefs Mobile Bay once boasted, while the latest harvest covered only limited areas around Heron Bay and Cedar Point.
As Alabama’s harvest closed in February, oystermen complained that there were more oysters out there, ripe for the taking. Marine Resources officials said they were taking a conservative approach in the hope of helping the rebound continue into the 2020-2021 season.
Scott Bannon, head of Alabama’s Marine Resources Division, said Wednesday that he doesn’t think the Florida shutdown is an omen of things to come for Mobile Bay. “Their situation is substantially different than ours,” he said. And while Florida officials feel the need for an extended shutdown while they try to get remediation efforts to take hold, Alabama officials are pursuing various remediation projects that don’t require such a disruption, he said.
Bannon said Marine Resources staff have begun making field assessments that will guide the division’s rules on the 2020-21 season, which by law can’t start until at least Oct. 1. He said the division will share its findings at a public meeting likely to take place in September.