Long Before The Pyramids And The Bible, Maryland Had Oysters

CALIFORNIA, Md. — Indeed, these humble little creatures have been around so long that they even predate the Chesapeake Bay itself, which was formed during the Pleistocene era, colloquially known as the last ice age, estimated to be about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. And according to an academic paper from the Royal Society, the fossil record shows that the oysters have been here at least 3 million years.

To put that into perspective, consider the difference between $3 million and 12,000.

And while it’s interesting to know how long they’ve been around, it’s even more fascinating learning about how they affect us all. For creatures that don’t move, don’t talk, and seemingly do nothing, you wouldn’t believe the incredible work they do and how they shape our world.

So in this article, The BayNet will talk about how oysters shape our environment and what has happened in parts of the world where they have gone extinct from the natural environment.

What’s the deal with these little guys?

While many of us recognize oysters as simply food, they’re a lot more than that. Notably, they keep the waters that they live in clean. They are filter feeders, meaning they feed by filtering water through their gills and consuming food particles, sediments, excess nitrogen and contaminants. And under the right conditions, one singular oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water per day.

This is important to note, because there is about 3% of the native oyster population left in the Chesapeake, according to NOAA. Without them, the Chesapeake would fill with excess algae and nitrogen, rendering it dirty and inhabitable for other species.

Not only do they keep our waters clean, but they also keep our land intact. It used to be the case that oyster reefs were so large that they grew vertically, breaking through the ocean’s surface like a natural wall, and blocked incoming waves from the sea, protecting our coastlines from sinking into the ocean. Historical documentation even mentions ships having to navigate around these walls of oyster reefs, lest they be sunk and become a part of the reef themselves.

They also play a role in our culture and our economy.

In the late 19th century, oysters were a massive part of Maryland’s economic development. As a matter of fact, back in the 1800s, Maryland was one of the most commercially important areas for oystering here in the United States. At its peak, sometime between 1880 and 1910, 160 million pounds of oyster meat were produced a year. This economic boom we were enjoying shaped our cities (wharves, harbors, steamboat landings, waterfront towns) and created, in turn, our love of oysters as a food (oyster and shucking houses, restaurants).

And while trying to figure out how much is being commercially harvested now is tricky, an article published by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources estimated about 430,000 bushels of oysters were produced between 2023 and 2024.

While that might sound good, recall that over a century ago we were producing millions of pounds of oysters. The numbers we produce now are a fraction of what we used to produce.

So if the oysters keep our waters clean, shape our culture and cities, and provide food and jobs…

What happens when they disappear altogether?

You get places like the Hudson Bay in New York, where heavy metals and toxic pollution killed the waterway.

To replace what oysters once did naturally, the city had to invest billions of dollars in taxpayer money in infrastructure—creating wastewater treatment centers, such as the Catskill Disinfection Facility and the Croton Water Filtration Plant. Even now, that’s still not enough. The local government, with the help of nonprofit organizations, is still trying to restore the Hudson to what it once was before.

A similar story unfolded across the Atlantic in England’s Thames River.

During the Industrial Revolution, overharvesting and unchecked pollution stripped the Thames of its oyster beds. Raw sewage and industrial waste overwhelmed the river, leaving the last few remaining oysters overwhelmed, essentially poisoning themselves attempting to filter out the water.

The government would then spend the next hundred years trying to engineer their way out of the problem, and by 1957, scientists at London’s Natural History Museum declared the Thames River officially dead. The river’s oxygen levels were deemed too low to sustain most forms of life.

This loss not only meant the end of the oysters themselves, but also the end of every other species that lived in that river and families whose livelihoods depended on it.

But there is hope…

In New York, nonprofits like the Billion Oyster Project are actively trying to restore the oyster population in the Hudson, and across the pond in the Thames, things are also looking up, thanks to organizations like Thames21.

As for us here in the Bay, we have government agencies like DNR that have launched tributary restoration projects, restoring about 1,200 acres worth of reefs across five tributaries. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation, a nonprofit organization, has also dedicated itself to helping restore the native oyster population.

Earlier in the article it was mentioned that the oysters were here long before the Bay, helping to shape our coast, creating its natural curves and iconic geography. But it’s not just the land that it’s shaped, but the people that have lived on it. Our waterfront towns and wharves tell the story of what once was, and we love the oysters here so much that we even have an annual festival celebrating them.

The oyster is deeply woven into our history and culture. It feeds us and sustains us, and with governments and organizations around the world starting to realize just how important the oysters are, perhaps someday we’ll see those giant vertical walls rising out of the ocean’s surface—quietly doing the work they’ve been doing for millions of years.

---