Theodore Roosevelt once said, “Get action. Seize the moment. Man was never intended to become an oyster.” By that, he probably meant that mankind was not intended to close itself off from the rest of the world. Today he might well have meant that humanity was not meant to go extinct, which is what is happening to the oyster.
Yes, that “slimy, gobby shellfish which civilization gives men the hardihood to eat without removing its entrails” (to quote Ambrose Bierce) may soon be disappearing from our plates. Most of the wild ones already have, and farmed oyster populations are not sustainable. So says Michael Beck of the Nature Conservancy and the University of California, Santa Cruz. He and his team have studied native oyster reefs in 40 ecoregions around the world and concluded that the mollusks “are functionally extinct—in that they lack any significant ecosystem role and remain at less than 1 percent of prior abundances in many bays (37 percent) and ecoregions (28 percent).” In the past, oysters played an important role in filtering water in the bays.
The decline, they say, is attributable to overfishing and trawling, which tears up the reefs where oysters naturally live. While attempts have been made to replace native species with non-native ones, the new oysters often carry diseases to which the existing oysters are vulnerable.
The problems faced by oysters are particularly apparent in the Elkhorn Slough. Having lost 99 percent of its reefs, this coastal home of once-abundant oyster population is now down to approximately 5,000 specimens; they are therefore considered to be on the verge of extinction.
“Throughout the West Coast, most oyster reefs are functionally extinct,” says Beck. There is, however, still a chance for their survival. Researchers with the Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve are hoping to double the natural oyster population there within the next three to five years. While that would not make the oysters commercially viable, it would begin to restore the reef and increase the population even further in the long term.
Today virtually all oysters we eat are farmed. The largest concentration of wild oysters in the world, located in the Gulf of Mexico, has suffered untold damage due to the recent BP fiasco there. Author Josh Ozersky adds that the problem is even exacerbated by progressives, who usually tend to protect endangered animals. On the other hand, they also despise farmed seafood—by insisting on non-farmed oysters they are contributing to the animal’s decline as well.
That doesn’t bode well for the oyster at all. Only a worldwide ban on oyster harvesting until the surviving populations can recover can ensure that future generations will be able to feast on oysters on the half shell. Of course, achieving that means increased regulation and the fact is, that’s not likely to happen in the current political climate. If the world is “our oyster,” the future looks grim. Read more at KSBW, Yahoo News and Time Magazine.
