Oyster Recovery Initiative
Eglseder Wealth Management Group, Inc., founding sponsor of the Chesapeake Bay Oyster Reef Recovery Initiative, has teamed up with the Marylanders Grow Oysters Program to promote and enable people in our community to grow their own oyster gardens and help heal the Bay.
Why?
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In 1884, the harvest for oysters was 15 million bushels.
- In 2010, the annual harvest was 185,245 bushels.
- The Chesapeake Bay has lost 99% of its historic oyster population.
- A single mature oyster can filter up to 55 gallons of water per day. Oysters remove silt, sediment, and nitrates and provide a key habitat to other marine species.
- At one point in time, oysters were so plentiful they could filter the entire bay in 3.3 days (83 billion oysters). Now it takes over 700 days to filter the entire bay, and the oysters can’t filter fast enough to balance the ecosystem.
What Can You Do To Help?
- Grow oysters! Nature needs your help, and if you have a dock then you are in the perfect location to grow oysters due to the low salinity of the mid-shore.
- You can start your own oyster garden for FREE!
- The Marylanders Grow Oysters (MGO) Program will provide a free cage and free spat-on-shell to get started.
- Oysters can be transplanted to reefs after just one growing season and can live up to 10 years.
- 80%-90% of oyster spat in the wild doesn’t survive to reach market size. But in an oyster garden you can reverse that statistic and 80%-90% of your oyster spat will survive to market size.
- Contact us to sign up for the MGO Program and make a difference in restoring the Bay!
