By:
Parker Watson, B.A. in History and Museum Studies, Christopher Newport University
Sheri Shuck-Hall, Ph.D. Professor of History, Christopher Newport University
Oysters are an integral part of the oceans that surround us. They are especially important in the Chesapeake Bay as they filter and clean the water, and their reefs prevent coastal erosion and protect estuaries. Oysters are essential for the health of the bay’s ecosystem and are a source of food for the people of the mid-Atlantic and beyond. We have been eating oysters for generations. In fact, today’s methods of harvesting oysters are more like those practiced by Indigenous peoples that inhabited the Chesapeake Bay area before European settlement. Featuring artifacts from the Watermen’s Museum in Yorktown and archival images from the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia, this exhibit will explore oyster harvesting by diverse people throughout time in the Chesapeake Bay and discuss how we can help preserve the ecosystem and support sustainable practices.
Indigenous and Colonial Harvesting
Oysters are a very interesting species. When looking at how they live below the water, oysters start out as floating larvae before eventually settling down on a solid surface, such as rocks. Over time, they create oyster reefs by gathering with other oysters and grow together. Oysters around 500 years ago were mostly average size (adults can grow up to 8 inches, but it is more common for them to be from 3 to 5 inches in the Chesapeake Bay today). They are measured by the size of the shell. Indigenous people had methods of selecting and harvesting oysters by hand, mostly by men or boys, and resulted in picking more consistent sizes. Those tribes living near the Chesapeake Bay practiced sustainability as they collected oysters without harming the habitat. Four supporting factors that contributed to a sustainable oyster population were: water depth and existing technology restricted communities to harvesting close to shore; oysters may have been harvested intensively only at certain times of the year; the density of the human population was drastically lower; and human diets at the time had a mixture of marine and land-dwelling resources. The Algonquian-speaking tribes of the Chesapeake Bay ate oysters regularly, either stewed or roasted, because they were a very valuable source of protein for the Native population, and the size of the oyster meat provided plenty of food to support the villages.[1]
When Europeans arrived in North America, they had limited knowledge of what the land was like or what kind of food supply that this new world offered. When they met Indigenous peoples, they eventually learned how to farm fruits and vegetables and hunt and fish the wildlife, including the Chesapeake Bay oyster. Realizing that oysters were not only an excellent food source but also a way to earn money, colonists used tools to harvest them more easily. Oyster tongs were widely used from the 18th century onward; they had long pieces of wood with metal clamps at the end to scrape the top layer from the reef and pull up bunches of oysters rather than picking them by hand. Oysters quickly became a popular protein in mid-Atlantic diets, especially as oyster tongers competed in a growing market.[2]
Boom Time
In the 19th and 20th centuries, oyster harvesting experienced a boom. A new technology, called the dredge, provided quicker and more efficient extraction of oysters from the reefs, especially if used with motorized boats. This piece of equipment would be thrown over the back of a boat and towed while moving. Its purpose was to scrape the top of the oyster reefs and collect large quantities of oysters. However, in doing so, dredges scraped and destroyed the floor of the Chesapeake Bay, which disrupted the ecosystem for the oyster and other organisms that dwelled on the ocean floor. Many communities of oyster tongers, who represented more traditional methods of oyster harvesting, resisted dredging.[3]
Watermen who continued to use tongs to harvest oysters in the second half of the 19th century were typically smaller and owner-operated compared to their highly industrialized counterparts. The new dredging system outstripped the oyster yield of more traditional tongers. In 1849, watermen harvested 178,000 bushels of oysters; ten years later it jumped to 2.3 million bushels. By 1865, oyster harvesting in Virginia increased to 2 million bushels per year, then doubled to 4 million by 1871. Consequently, the period between 1860 and 1920 saw a massive expansion of the Chesapeake Bay oyster fishery and the introduction of industrialized harvesting that eventually depleted oysters in the bay.[4]
Increased oyster harvesting from dredging in the 19th and 20th centuries also came with a new way for oysters to be sold to consumers. In the early 1800s canning revolutionized food preservation. Harvested oysters need to be eaten quickly (up to 2 days on ice for safety). However, canned oysters allowed greater commercial distribution beyond the coast and a long shelf life (albeit sacrificing the fresh flavor). The process was simple: canners kept them on ice until they were heated 5 to 7 minutes at 400 degrees. Then, they shucked the oysters once cooled and placed the meat into cans or jars with hot water and salt before sealed and sterilized, preserving it on average for a year. The hub of the Chesapeake Bay commercial oyster canning industry was in Baltimore, Maryland by Edward Wright from Kent County on the Eastern Shore in 1831. Oyster canning improved throughout the years, especially during the 1860s after the Civil War. Canners experimented with new methods that preserved the oysters more efficiently to transport them for sale to different states and countries.[5]
How Can We Help Preserve Oyster Reefs?
In the late 1800s, the United States experienced a nationwide conservation movement to preserve its natural resources, including the Chesapeake Bay. Established in 1875, the Virginia Fish Commission (now known as the Virginia Marine Resources Commission) began to push legislation that placed greater restrictions on oyster harvesting. In 1929, the commission appointed oyster inspectors and started to plant shells to rebuild oyster habitats and counter the overharvesting of past decades. Today there are alternative ways to harvest oysters responsibly in the Chesapeake Bay. As dredging is highly destructive, many have opted to use more environmentally friendly cages that help sustain the bay oysters and keep the ecosystem healthy. People now farm oysters by placing cages in the water where the oysters create a “reef” as they grow and flourish with access to natural food sources, like algae, then flip the cages regularly. Below are images of the different types of cages that are common today, including the bottom cage, the Taylor float, and the downunder. These are used all throughout the bay to keep the oyster population alive and healthy, but most importantly, sustain the oyster population.[6]
The Chesapeake Bay oyster has been a steadily harvested and eaten seafood for many generations. From the Indigenous peoples’ careful hand-selection harvesting to modern-day sustainable oyster farming, we have learned to extract oysters safely and efficiently while protecting the ecosystem. As of 2020, the number of market-size oysters (larger than three inches) was about 400 million compared to 2018 when it was 300 million. These are significant improvements and proves that with community action and environmental education, positive change happens.[7] We must be careful to protect the Chesapeake Bay oyster so that they can continue to thrive. To learn more about oysters and watermen, visit the Watermen’s Museum in historic Yorktown and the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia. Here you will find exhibits with interesting artifacts, marine archaeology, and interactive displays and programs tracing the history of our diverse coast and its people. For more information conservation and how you can help protect the bay, see the Chesapeake Bay Foundation at Homepage – Chesapeake Bay Foundation (cbf.org).
Acknowledgements
This exhibit was a service-learning project with the Watermen’s Museum in Yorktown and the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News in partnership with the Public History Center and the Department of History at Christopher Newport University. We would like to give special thanks to Mike Steen, the Director of Education at Watermen’s, for assisting Parker with this exhibit, providing his expertise on the Chesapeake Bay, and acting as a peer reviewer. We would also like to thank the Mariners’ Museum Library for access to their extensive digital collection of photographs on watermen.
About the Author
Parker Watson graduated from Christopher Newport University with a B.A. in history and a minor in museum studies, graduating with Service Distinction. During his time at CNU, Parker completed an internship with Great Bridge Battlefield and Waterways Park in Chesapeake. He is currently working as a museum technician at the Hampton University Museum while pursuing a MA in museum studies.
Notes
[1] “Maryland Fish Facts,” Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Accessed April 12, 2023. https://dnr.maryland.gov/fisheries/Pages/fish-facts.aspx?fishname=Shellfish%2B-%2BEastern%2BOyster; “Ancient Native-American Methods May Be Key to Sustainable Oyster Harvests.” Smithsonian Insider. Accessed March 10, 2023. https://insider.si.edu/2016/05/finding-a-more-sustainable-future-for-oysters-in-the-past/; Fisheries, NOAA. “Oyster Reef Habitat.” NOAA, February 4, 2022. https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/national/habitat-conservation/oyster-reef-habitat. For more information on Indigenous people’s diets and how they harvested shellfish, see Helen Roundtree, The Powhatan Indians of Virginia: Their Traditional Culture (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992).
[2] Juliana M. Harding, Roger Mann, and Melissa J. Southworth, “Shell Length-at-age Relationships in James River, Virginia, Oysters (Crassostrea virginica) Collected Four Centuries Apart,” Journal of Shellfish Research 27(5), (1 December 2008), 1109-1115. https://doi.org/10.2983/0730-8000-27.5.1109
[3] Bradford Botwick and Debra A. McClane, “Landscapes of Resistance: A View of the Nineteenth-Century Chesapeake Bay Oyster Fishery.” Historical Archaeology 39, no. 3 (2005): 94–112.
[4] David M. Schulte, “History of the Virginia Oyster Fishery, Chesapeake Bay, USA,” Frontiers in Marine Science. Sec. Marine Fisheries, Aquaculture and Living Resources Volume 4 – 09 May 2017. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2017.00127; Botwick and McClane, “Landscapes of Resistance,” 94–112; Michael Xavier Kirby, “Fishing down the coast: historical expansion and collapse of oyster fisheries along continental margins,” PNAS 23 August 2004, 101 (35) 13096-13099. Fishing down the coast: Historical expansion and collapse of oyster fisheries along continental margins | PNAS.
[5] William S. Dudley, Maritime Maryland: A History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010,), 110-111; N. D. Jarvis, “Curing and Canning of Fishery Products: A History.” Marine Fisheries Review 50, no. 4 (1988): 180-185; “Selecting, Preparing and Canning Meat.” National Center for Home Food Preservation | How Do I? Can Meats. Accessed April 7, 2023. https://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can_05/oysters.html.
[6] Schulte, “History of the Virginia Oyster Fishery”; “Oysters: How Are They Doing?” Chesapeake Bay Foundation. Accessed April 21, 2023. https://www.cbf.org/blogs/save-the-bay/2020/08/oysters-how-are-they-doing.html; Carl F Cerco and Mark R. Noel, “Can Oyster Restoration Reverse Cultural Eutrophication in Chesapeake Bay?” Estuaries and Coasts 30, no. 2 (2007): 331–43; VMRC HISTORICAL HIGHLIGHTS (virginia.gov).
[7] Ibid.