Virginia has made significant investments in the restoration of oyster reefs in the Chesapeake Bay, and now a study led by the College of William & Mary’s Batten School and Virginia Institute of Marine Science suggests those management practices are literally paying off in the Rappahannock River.
The study, recently published in the “Journal of Environmental Management,” was led by W&M’s Batten School of Coastal & Marine Sciences Ph.D. student Alexandria Marquardt, who presented the results to the Virginia Marine Resources Commission’s Shellfish Management Advisory Committee last Wednesday, Feb. 19.
According to VIMS, in addition to supporting local economies, oysters filter the surrounding water removing algae and excess nutrients while clumping together to form large reefs that serve as habitat for many fish and marine animals. Though once abundant, oyster populations in the Chesapeake Bay collapsed in the mid-1980s due to a combination of overfishing and disease.
While V...