Oyster Beds Undergoing Restoration in the Great Wicomico River

REEDVILLE — The Delvin K., one of the last working Chesapeake Bay oyster buy-boats, was docked at a pier in Cockrells Creek Wednesday morning. But the Delvin K. wasn't buying oysters from local watermen to transport to shucking houses. It was taking on 1,700 weighty bushels of shell to deposit in the nearby Great Wicomico River — part of the largest oyster restoration project in state history. A small tractor loaded its hopper with shucking house shells scooped from huge mounds stored on land owned by Omega Protein Corp., which operates the last menhaden processing plant on the Atlantic. It dumped the shells onto a conveyor belt, which dropped them onto the buy-boat's deck. Then the Delvin K. chugged to the Great Wicomico and state-managed oyster grounds there designated for replenishing. It opened its deck flaps and let go with a high-pressure hose to wash the shell overboard, whittling the mound down to nothing in about 15 minutes before heading back for another load. "The river's getting nicely re-shelled every year," said Jim Wesson, oyster restoration specialist with the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, or VMRC. "With what we do as well as private industry." According to VMRC, from May through August the state plans to deposit nearly 1 million bushels of shell in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries using a record $2 million for oyster replenishment approved by the General Assembly earlier this year. Read the entire article by clicking here.