What is tonging for oysters?
“Tongers” or “tongmen” used tongs for gathering oysters from the floor of the Bay. These tongs ranged between seven and twenty-four feet in length and looked like two garden-rakes with very long handles, with the tooth-side of each rake facing each other.
How do you harvest oysters in the Chesapeake Bay?
Essentially, four types of “gear” are used to commercially harvest oysters, the first three from the relative comfort of a boat: dredging (employing a dredge to tow across the bottom), hand tonging (the oldest method where the gatherers work large tongs with rake-like attachments), patent tonging (using hydraulically …
What happened to the oysters in Chesapeake Bay?
But decades of overharvesting, pollution, and disease have contributed to the decline of oyster populations in the Bay. Destructive harvesting techniques led to the loss of roughly three-quarters of the Bay’s oyster reefs between 1860 and 1920.
Can oysters save Chesapeake Bay?
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) needs your help—and your oyster shells—to restore native oysters in the Chesapeake Bay. Donate your empty shells to CBF so we can recycle them into more oyster reefs and repopulate the Bay with more oysters. Oyster shells are literally the foundation of our reef restoration efforts!
How do oyster dredges work?
Power dredging is a method of scraping oysters from the bay’s bottom with a metal rake-like device and bag dragged behind a motorized work boat. It was invented just after the Civil War, but banned by the state for more than a century because it removes too many oysters too fast and rips up oyster reefs.
How do you catch oysters in Maryland?
Harvesting Methods: A person may catch oysters recreationally only by hand, rake, shaft tong, or diving with or without scuba equipment. Also a resident may not catch oysters recreationally while on the boat of someone who is catching oysters commercially.
Why are oysters dying?
But over-harvesting, disease and habitat loss have led to a severe drop in oyster populations. Scientists are working to manage harvests, establish sanctuaries, overcome the effects of disease and restore reefs with hatchery-raised seed in an effort to bring back the bivalve.
Why are oysters good for the Chesapeake Bay?
Oysters play many important roles in the Chesapeake Bay. But they also provide critical benefits to the Bay ecosystem—they filter and remove excess nutrients like nitrogen from the water and they grow in reefs that provide habitat for fish and crabs.
How bad is the Chesapeake Bay?
Unfortunately, the Chesapeake Bay faces serious problems due to human activities, including polluted stormwater runoff, over-fertilization and pollution from animal wastes, deforestation, wetland destruction from agricultural, urban, and suburban development, and sea level rise caused by global climate change.
Why are oysters disappearing?
Oysters are being driven to annihilation by pollution, non-native species, and overfishing — and when they disappear, so does the sea life which relies on them.
How seafood is caught dredging?
Dredging is a fishing method in which a dredge is dragged across the sea floor, either scraping or penetrating the bottom. Dredging. A typical dredge consists of a mouth frame with an attached collection bag.
How do scallop dredges work?
Scallop dredges are heavy-duty metal framed nets approximately 85 cm wide, which are pulled over the seabed. A row of metal teeth (10 cm in length) are mounted on the front of the dredge, and these dig into the seabed and flip scallops out of the sand into the nets. Each bar will have up to 6 dredges mounted on it.
What kind of oysters are in the Chesapeake Bay?
Chesapeake Bay’s bounty of fish and shellfish amazed and delighted early travelers. Oysters were first among the bay’s wonders, described as “very large and delicate in taste” and thriving in “whole banks and beds.” Out of the shell, oysters quickly go bad.
How big is the largest Chesapeake oyster fork?
This oyster fork, made in Baltimore in the 1920s, was used by the “Sage of Baltimore,” journalist and satirist H. L. Mencken. The largest genuine Maryland oyster—the veritable bivalve of the Chesapeake…is as large as your open hand. A magnificent, matchless reptile!
What kind of tongs are used to harvest oysters?
Even so, most of the oyster harvest from the Chesapeake is taken with hand tongs. A more modern method is patent tonging. The patent tong is similar to the metal part of hand tongs, but they are larger. They are hinged so that they open as they are lowered and close as they are lifted. They are attached to a cable instead of wooden handles.
Why was Baltimore the center of oyster canning?
The oyster beds nearby, and the city’s growing population of workers and rail connections, made Baltimore the center of canning in the country. By 1870, there were more than 100 packing houses in the city. Baltimore lay very near the immense protein factory of Chesapeake Bay, and out of the bay it ate divinely.
