Number of oysters harvested declines

While oysters harvested from Galveston Bay this year are especially good, the yield is low and the industry overall still is struggling to recover from Hurricane Ike, observers said.

More than 50 percent of the bay’s oyster reefs were either destroyed or are covered in storm-generated sediment and off limits to harvesting.

“Our production area has really been crippled,” Mihael Ivic, who owns Misho’s Oyster Co. in San Leon, said. “The boats will work all day just to get 10 sacks.”

Ten sacks is about 1,100 pounds of oysters.

For Steven Hillman, whose family operates Hillman’s Seafood Co. in Dickinson, the oyster harvest was so bad in Galveston Bay that his company shut down its local operations about a month into the season.

“Our business is off by 70 percent in Galveston Bay,” said Hillman, whose company specializes in shipping frozen oysters to out-of-state markets, including Florida, California, the Carolinas and Nevada. Hillman said the company figured things would be tough in Galveston Bay.

“Two weeks into the season, we went from 30 to 40 sacks a day to five or 10,” he said. “That just doesn’t work.”

Hillman’s shut down the Galveston County operation and focused on its facility in Port Lavaca, which is producing 1,200 to 1,400 cases a day of frozen oysters for shipping.

“Thank God for Port Lavaca and San Antonio Bay,” Ivic, who also is taking in oysters from the bays to the south, said. “Those bays helped a lot. It’s been a bumper crop there.”

Signs Of Recovery

There are some signs of recovery in Galveston Bay, but were it not for oysters from other Texas bay systems, the Texas oyster industry very well could have been on its last leg. A state plan to remove the sediment that covers Galveston Bay’s oyster beds and rebuild those damaged by the hurricane should help the recovery, Ivic and Hillman said.

Using a pair of federal grants totaling $2.7 million, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and Galveston Bay’s oystermen are scheduled to embark on a massive oyster recovery program.

Jennie Rohrer, the oyster mapping and restoration biologist for the state parks department, said the first step will be to dredge mud away from the sediment-covered oyster reefs in Galveston Bay. The state actually will pay the oyster fishermen $1,000 a day to take the sacks that they usually drag across the top of the reefs to harvest the oysters and instead rake away the sediment.

State officials and oystermen hope to clear and reinvigorate beds being choked by silt and inactivity since Ike.

A big part of the effort will be on East Galveston Bay, where up to 80 percent of public oyster reefs are covered in sediment, Rohrer said.

Phase 2 will be to use crushed concrete, limestone, river rock and oyster shells to rebuild and expand once-productive oyster reefs that were damaged by the hurricane. Those materials became the base for the cultch that serves as the base of a oyster reef.

The timing of getting the materials in place is crucial, Rohrer said. She hopes the project will start in June, which is considered the prime breeding season for oysters.

That is the most active time for when the spat — or oyster larvae — is flowing in the bay. The spat attaches to the cultch and eventually turns into the oysters served up at restaurants across the country.

Impact Beyond The Dinning Table

That’s important, given that Galveston Bay accounts for at least 50 percent, and as much as 80 percent, of the state’s oyster business each year in an industry that, according to state figures, generates $60 million — $23 million from Galveston Bay alone.

“Nationally, about 40 percent of the eastern oysters are from Louisiana and 20 percent come from Texas,” Lance Robinson, the regional director for coastal fisheries of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, said. “Historically, the major producer of oysters in the state, producing up to 80 percent, comes out of Galveston Bay.”

Robinson said the importance of the oyster industry in the state can’t be measured in sales of the oysters alone. He said because an oyster can filter 50 gallons of water a day, the water quality in Galveston Bay can be tied directly to the abundance of oyster reefs.

“The biggest problem we will see this year is that the water quality will suffer because of the lack of oysters,” Robinson said.

The better the water quality, the better the ability to support other sea life, including shrimp and crabs and the predatory fish that feed off them. That, in turn, supports the anglers who work the areas around reefs in order to have a good day of fishing.

“The importance of the oysters far exceeds the commercial value of the product,” Robinson said. “We have lost more than a food item we like to eat. It’s the base of the food chain in the bay.”

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Oysters On The Economic Shell

2007

Statewide: 5.6 million pounds of oyster meat

Price paid to oystermen: $19.2 million

Galveston Bay: 2.78 million pounds of oyster meat

Price paid to oystermen: $7.4 million

Economic impact state: $60 million

Economic impact Galveston Bay region: $23 million

2008

Statewide: 2.67 million pounds of oyster meat*

Price paid to oystermen: $8.8 million

Galveston Bay: 2 million pounds of oyster meat

Price paid to oystermen: $4.8 million

Economic impact state: $27.4 million

Economic impact Galveston Bay region: $14.9 million

*Production reduced by red tide to the south and Hurricane Ike on Upper Texas Coast. Most of the production was limited to private lease oyster beds.

SOURCE: Texas Parks and Wildlife Department