~Erika and Alejandra's ID-PSA~
Hello this is Erika and Alejandra's ID-PSA and it is on oyster population and how it has declined over the past hundred years. There are many reasons that this has happened. Reasons are that there has been overfishing, and two diseases called MSX and Dermo that kill the oysters. Oysters are important to the environment because they clean our Chesapeake Bay. In the 1600's, with the amount of oysters there were, they could clean the Chesapeake Bay in 2 to 3 days. Nowadays it would take the oysters monthes to clean the Bay. We need our oysters to help keep the bay clean and without the oysters we can say goodbye to many other animals that depend on the oyster as well.
Here is some information on oysters:
The Chesapeake Bay, on the Atlantic coast, is the largest estuary in the United States. It is famous for its seafood, especially crabs and oysters. However, in the last century, the bay's oyster population has been in steady decline.
For hundreds of years, watermen of the Chesapeake Bay have made a living by harvesting oysters. In the last 50 years, the number of oysters has declined dramatically.
Tommy Leggett is an Oyster Restoration and Fisheries scientist with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, an environmental organization that works to protect the bay's resources. "Our population is down to one to three percent of historical levels. So, consequently our bay's water quality is down," said Tommy.
In the late 1950s, parasites, which were introduced from foreign oysters, began to kill the Chesapeake Bay oyster population.
"Since 2000 we have been attempting to grow about a million oysters a year as brood stock to be placed on state sanctuary reefs to help jump start rivers,” said Tommy Legget. “To date, we have produced about five million oysters that we have transplanted onto a number of reefs in the Virginia portion of the Chesapeake Bay."
