The Willapa Bay Oyster Reserves In
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The Willapa Bay Oyster Reserves in Washington State: Fishery Collapse, Creating a Sustainable Replacement, and the Potential for Habitat Conservation and Restoration Author(s): Brett R. Dumbauld, Bruce E. Kauffman, Alan C. Trimble and Jennifer L. Ruesink Source: Journal of Shellfish Research, 30(1):71-83. Published By: National Shellfisheries Association DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2983/035.030.0111 URL: http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.2983/035.030.0111 BioOne (www.bioone.org) is a nonprofit, online aggregation of core research in the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences. BioOne provides a sustainable online platform for over 170 journals and books published by nonprofit societies, associations, museums, institutions, and presses. Your use of this PDF, the BioOne Web site, and all posted and associated content indicates your acceptance of BioOne’s Terms of Use, available at www.bioone.org/page/terms_of_use. Usage of BioOne content is strictly limited to personal, educational, and non-commercial use. Commercial inquiries or rights and permissions requests should be directed to the individual publisher as copyright holder. BioOne sees sustainable scholarly publishing as an inherently collaborative enterprise connecting authors, nonprofit publishers, academic institutions, research libraries, and research funders in the common goal of maximizing access to critical research. Journal of Shellfish Research, Vol. 30, No. 1, 71–83, 2011. THE WILLAPA BAY OYSTER RESERVES IN WASHINGTON STATE: FISHERY COLLAPSE, CREATING A SUSTAINABLE REPLACEMENT, AND THE POTENTIAL FOR HABITAT CONSERVATION AND RESTORATION BRETT R. DUMBAULD,1,* BRUCE E. KAUFFMAN,2 ALAN C. TRIMBLE3 AND JENNIFER L. RUESINK3 1U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agriculture Research Service, Hatfield Marine Science Center, 2030 S.E. Marine Science Drive, Newport, OR 97365; 2Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Willapa Bay Field Station, PO Box 190, Ocean Park, WA 98640; 3Department of Biology, Box 351800, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195 ABSTRACT Oysters have been an important resource in Washington state since the mid 1800s and are intimately associated with recent history of the Willapa Bay estuary, just as they have defined social culture around much larger U.S. east coast systems. The Willapa Bay oyster reserves were set aside in 1890 to preserve stocks of the native oyster Ostrea lurida in this estuary, but these stocks were overfished and replaced with the introduced Pacific oyster Crassostrea gigas during the late 1920s. Pacific oysters have spawned and set naturally in this estuary on a fairly regular basis since that time, and have formed the basis of a sustainable fishery established on state oyster reserves. The fishery is managed as an annual sale of oysters to private aquaculture interests. Oysters are harvested mostly by hand from intertidal tracts, usually moved to better growing areas closer to the estuary mouth, and shell is required to be returned to the reserves to perpetuate the fishery. Although oyster harvest for human consumption will remain an important social management goal, these bivalves have been shown to provide a suite of other ecosystem functions and services. A survey of the reserves suggests that they represent 11.2% of the intertidal habitat in Willapa Bay and cover substantial subtidal areas as well. A comparison with historical maps suggests that most of the low intertidal area in the reserves formerly populated by native oysters is now covered primarily with eelgrass (Zostera marina), which potentially serves as important habitat for numerous other organisms, including juvenile salmon, Dungeness crab, and migratory waterfowl like black Brant. Native oysters can still potentially be restored to some of these areas, but the value of both introduced oysters and eelgrass as habitat and ecosystem engineers also deserves attention, and the reserves provide an excellent place to elucidate the role of these additional conservation targets at the landscape scale. KEY WORDS: oyster reserves, Ostrea lurida, Crassostrea gigas, Washington, oysters, habitat, eelgrass, recruitment INTRODUCTION program. Originally, 4,548 ha (11,238 acres) in Willapa Bay and 1,821 ha (4,500 acres) in South Puget Sound were included in The Washington state oyster reserves currently represent the Washington state reserve system, but these totals were about 4,400 ha (10,873 acres) of tidelands that were originally reduced to about 3,995 ha and 405 ha, respectively, as tidelands set aside by the first territorial legislature in 1890 to preserve were sold to private shellfish growers. Although native oysters stocks of the native oyster (Ostrea lurida, Carpenter 1864) for are currently rebounding on portions of the Puget Sound re- oyster farmers under the direction of the Washington State serves in Oakland Bay, and there has been renewed interest in Department of Fisheries (now the Washington Department of recreational, tribal, and commercial clam fisheries therein, they Fish and Wildlife (WDFW)) (Woelke 1969, Westley et al. 1985). were generally reduced to small parcels of some of the least Since that time, the state legislature has periodically reviewed productive lands, and use has been limited since 1927 (Westley the laws and modified them to fit the current nature of the et al. 1985). We focus, instead, on the Willapa Bay oyster re- fishery. The fishery for native oysters paralleled numerous serves, where a sustainable and important fishery for Pacific others around the world, starting out as a capture fishery that oysters has been maintained. Furthermore, because these re- ultimately overexploited the oyster stock, leaving only remnant serves represent a relatively large portion of the habitat in this populations in most areas where they were abundant along the estuary, the ecosystem role of both native and introduced west coast of the United States (Baker 1995, Kirby 2004, Beck bivalves can be evaluated, and management for both conserva- et al. 2009, Polson & Zacherl 2009, White et al. 2009). However, tion and sustainable harvest considered. it has now become a large-scale commercial farming operation The history of the Willapa Bay oyster reserves is intimately and a much smaller scale recreational fishery for the Pacific associated with the history of the oyster industry and tideland oyster (Crassostrea gigas, Thunberg 1794), which was intro- ownership in Washington state (Woelke 1969). At the time of duced to Washington state waters in 1920 (Steele 1964, Chew the 1849 gold rush in California, the native or ‘‘Olympia’’ 1990, Lindsay & Simons 1997, Ruesink et al. 2005, White et al. oyster, O. lurida, was harvested in a true open-access fishery in 2009). Recent legislative changes in 2001 and 2007 involved Willapa Bay, which involved hand tonging and moving small creating two advisory committees and setting aside funds oysters from natural beds to other intertidal areas, where they generated from shellfish sales on the reserves to cover expenses, were held until shipment, usually by sailing schooners to mar- assist with research, and establish a shellfish onsite sewage grant kets in San Francisco (Baker 1995, White et al. 2009). From the outset, harvest was extensive, and the lack of knowledge about *Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected] the life cycle of the native oyster by these early fishers, combined DOI: 10.2983/035.030.0111 with harvest techniques used, contributed to depletion of the 71 72 DUMBAULD ET AL. native oyster stocks and lack of renewal, because oysters were proportion of their volume in empty shells to provide substrate moved to higher intertidal areas and shell was not returned to for natural oyster sets and, therefore, future harvest. The third, the low intertidal and subtidal areas where these oysters were and last, activity includes updating, surveying, and policing abundant and where they would survive after setting. The reserve boundaries. Finally, WDFW also supervises separate Washington State Territorial Legislature passed the first oyster oyster seed-catching operations on the reserves and, since 1989, laws in 1877, which made it possible to own up to 20 acres of has charged a cultching fee for placing shell on reserve grounds. tidelands not covered by natural oysters for development of We provide an update on the current status of the Willapa oyster lands. The new act prohibited private ownership of Bay oyster reserves, including results of an intertidal habitat natural oyster beds but gave rights to discoverers of these beds survey conducted in 2006 and 2007. The current fishery for to use 4.47 ha for 5 y. A winter freeze in 1888 reportedly killed Pacific oysters on the reserves and its management, including 60% of the oysters above low tide (Townsend 1892). In 1890, shell return to the reserves and an annual assessment of oyster the first state legislature revisited the issue and set the natural settlement, are described. Current status is contrasted with oyster beds aside as reserves to be retained in the public domain historical condition by comparing an 1892 map of native oyster and to provide juvenile oysters, called ‘‘seed,’’ for the ‘‘oyster harvest areas with results of the current habitat survey. Last, we farmer’’ and an exploitable stock for the ‘‘fisherman.’’ They outline a plan for research and continued sustainable harvest further defined the principles of private tideland ownership and and management of Pacific oysters, conservation of existing development of tidelands for ‘‘oystering.’’ The Bush Act of 1895