They gathered to see a creature named Crassostrea ariakensis, the Suminoe oyster, native to China, Japan, India, Pakistan and other coastal nations of Southeast Asia. Virginia has been experimenting since 1996 with ariakensis, a cousin to our bay's native Crassostrea virginica. Ariakensis looks like our oyster, tastes as good, grows a lot faster and is highly resistant to the MSX and Dermo diseases that continue to depress the bay's shellfish to near-historic lows. But the new oyster on the block presents a tempting prospect. Oysters have finally gained recognition as being more valuable to the bay than just as tasty, profitable hors d'oeuvres.
Larger species feed on the reefs, making oyster rocks prime fishing grounds.
Most important, it has been calculated that oysters, as they pumped water through their gills to feed, once filtered and cleansed a volume of water equal to the whole bay every few days. Today's oysters, their numbers severely depleted, take more than a year to do the same work of clarifying the bay's algae-clogged waters. Oyster restoration has become a key strategy of the bay cleanup by Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and the federal government. Increasing oysters tenfold by 2010 is the ambitious goal. But, with the seemingly intractable disease problems, achieving the cleansing filtration of centuries past could at best take many decades and cost many tens of millions of dollars, says Ken Painter, an oyster scientist with the University of Maryland.