ON a crystal clear afternoon, the light air hinting of fall, the Miss Brandy motored up to a dock on the Kent Narrows in Grasonville, Md., in front of W. H. Harris Seafood. Heaped like a pile of rocks in the middle of the boat was the morning's haul -- oysters, the rough and craggy bottom dwellers that have been the shining jewels of the Chesapeake Bay for generations.
From the dock, Jason Ruth, a worker at Harris's, began culling the pile with an expert's eye, selecting those to keep and shuck and those to return to the bay. Taking handfuls at a time, Mr. Ruth flung the oysters back into the water. "See," he said, picking up one in a fluid motion and knocking it with a quick tap against the pile, making a hollow thunk. "There's nothing there. It's dead. Gone." The shell landed back in the water with a splash.
Similar scenes are unfolding these days up and down the Chesapeake Bay, where the annual oyster season is becoming an endangered tradition. For centuries, the Chesapeake has been synonymous with oysters. For early settlers, oyster reefs were so abundant that they posed a hazard for navigation, and with the introduction of canning in the 1800's, the Chesapeake became the source for oysters around the world.
But the annual good cheer surrounding the season is waning. That is because Chesapeake watermen pulled an all-time low of about 25,000 bushels of oysters from the bay last year, compared with 80,000 in 1993 -- and a staggering 15 million back in the glory days of 1885. From 1920 to 1970, before the oyster began its rapid decline, the industry contributed $65 million annually to the state of Maryland, a figure that didn't include the tourism it attracted. The annual figure has fallen to $500,000. Overharvesting and pollution have taken a toll on the native oyster, but far bigger threats to the species are two parasites that attack them, Dermo and MSX, which were first detected in the bay in the 1960's.
Harris's is a holdout in a devastated industry; one of the last oyster-packing companies on the Chesapeake, where once there were hundreds. Just a few miles across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge from Annapolis, the waters of Kent Narrows, which leads to the bay, was home to 13 oyster packing houses at about the time Harris's opened in 1947. Now, it stands alone in the shadow of the Kent Narrows Bridge.
But some oysters do survive in the bay. Harris's shucks, packs and sells them at its packing company and serves them in its dockside restaurant overlooking the narrows. At the height of oyster season, which began Oct. 1 and runs through the end of March, Harris's rolls out an all-you-can-eat buffet, featuring oysters served seven different ways.
Indeed, fall oyster celebrations still abound in bayside communities on the Chesapeake, where old traditions die hard and the oysters remain as much a symbol of the season's arrival as cider, apples and pumpkins. Here, the mighty oyster is toasted in the wood-paneled oyster bars of Annapolis -- McGarvey's, O'Brien's and the Middleton Tavern -- and honored along the bay's shores at festivals, shucking contests and skipjack races.
The events spotlighting oysters in October and November unfold like oysters on the half shell -- by the dozen. There are Tilghman Island Day, the J. Millard Tawes Oyster and Bull Roast in Crisfield, the St. Michaels Oysterfest, the Urbanna Oyster Festival, and the biggest pearl of them all for oyster lovers--the St. Mary's County Oyster Festival this weekend, home to the National Oyster Shucking Championship and National Oyster Cook-Off Contest. The festival features oysters in every imaginable combination: raw, steamed, fried or Rockefeller; stewed in chowder or mixed with cocktail sauce; or served with a swig of beer in a shot glass.
It is possible, too, to celebrate the season with a quieter sojourn, steering clear of the crowded festivals and venturing into sleepier coastal communities. From the Kent Narrows, they are a quick jaunt to the far side of the Chesapeake, heading south and east on Route 50, down the thumb print of land dangling between the bay and the Atlantic.
This route is frequently clogged with traffic headed toward the Atlantic Coast and Maryland's Eastern Shore in the summer months, but fewer people stop to explore the other stretch of coast, along the Chesapeake Bay. The towns along the peninsula's west coast, places like St. Michaels, Oxford and Crisfield, aren't easy to reach down twisting two-lane roads that dead end at the water's edge.
The small flecks of black that mark them on a map can persuade those short on time or unwise in the ways of the bay to save the detour for another day. But if you turn off Route 50 at Easton, and cut west toward the bay, the road quickly gives way to farmland, brown and drying corn stalks, pumpkin patches and fields dipped in gold at the hands of fall before opening onto the water.
PAST Easton and St. Michaels, Tilghman Island is one of those flecks, set on the tip of a peninsula connected to the mainland by a drawbridge across Knapp's Narrows. At the clanging of a bell, every 20 minutes or so, cars stop and the bridge slowly lifts as if raising a hand in greeting to the boats coming in and out of the harbor. On one side of the bridge is the Bridge Restaurant, which advertises oysters with crab imperial, and the Fairbank Tackle store, which sells tackle, ice and bait. On the other side is Harrison's Oyster Packing, another of the handful of oyster houses still in operation. Farther down the road, Captain Buddy Harrison, who owns the company, also runs the Chesapeake House, offering old-fashioned seafood dining and lodging overlooking the bay.
In Dogwood Harbor on Tilghman, fishing boats still outnumber sailboats and pleasure craft. On a recent Sunday morning, the harbor was peaceful, with only a few watermen cleaning and fixing their boats. In an earlier time, they would have been prepping their dredges for oyster season, but most won't be dredging this year.
Norman Murphy is a middle-aged waterman who grew up on Tilghman Island working the bay, as his own son does now. "No one here is oystering anymore," he said, shaking his head before adding a footnote. "Well, maybe a few."
Across the harbor from Mr. Murphy's slip are a handful of skipjacks -- a vanishing fleet of traditional oyster dredge boats and the last commercial sailing fishing fleet in North America. There were once almost 2,000 of the boats working the bay, but today, they number near 30, with only about 10 used for oystering.
Built at the peak of the oyster rush, in the late 1890's and early years of the 20th century, skipjacks are light, inexpensive boats that can navigate the shallow waters of the bay. They were designed to be agile to make multiple quick passes over an oyster bed, dragging dredges behind them. Today, oystermen use motorboats more than skipjacks, and they employ other methods, too, like hand-tonging and diving.
Many of the remaining skipjacks have become museum pieces, like the Martha Lewis in Baltimore, preserved by the Chesapeake Heritage Conservancy, and the E. C. Collier, now in the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels.
But lined up in Dogwood Harbor are four majestic skipjacks growing old very, very gracefully, their massive white sails lashed to the masts. They, too, are holdouts, though called upon less and less to dredge.
Wade Murphy, a third-generation waterman with 40 years of oystering under his belt, runs charter tours on his skipjack, the Rebecca T. Ruark, built in 1886. Each year the charter business gets bigger and bigger, Mr. Murphy said. "If it wasn't for that, I wouldn't be able to keep afloat."
Nearby, D. K. Bond was cleaning out his skipjack, the Mister Maybe, with a vision of running his own tours in the summer and hauling down to Florida come winter. "This boat costs $10,000 a year to keep up," Mr. Bond said. "If you spend $10,000 and make $5,000, it doesn't take long for you to get out of it. I'm going to catch tourists instead. It's easier."
This grim portrait doesn't mean that there are no oysters left in the Chesapeake. Both Virginia and Maryland have been spending several million dollars each year to restore native populations, and they are currently considering introducing a heartier nonnative species to the bay.
In 2005, led by the Army Corps of Engineers, the two states are expected to release a draft Environmental Impact Statement evaluating oyster recovery. Also, the Oyster Recovery Partnership, an alliance of organizations, businesses and individuals, has planted more than 330 million disease-free oyster seeds from the University of Maryland's Center for Environmental Science in 33 locations in the bay since 2000. The group aims to harvest the seeded oysters in enough time to save them from being attacked by Dermo or MSX, within three years.
Nonetheless, the commercial fishery business -- the packing and shipping operation that put Chesapeake Bay oysters on the map -- has all but collapsed.
But watermen still bring in salty, succulent oysters every year, and those are abundant at bay restaurants, raw bars, seafood stores and festivals. If you ask, you may find the oysters you order are from Long Island or the Gulf of Mexico, but in the height of oyster season, when the annual grind is under way, you are just as likely to get that coveted response, "from a local oyster bed."
In places like Tilghman, watermen still motor up to the dock at Harrison's packing company to deliver their day's haul, just as they have for generations, and inside, shuckers still wait to crack them open in record time, as they, too, have done for generations.
Like the watermen, shuckers are born into this hearty business more often than not. Opening a cold, tenacious oyster quickly without harming or slicing the tender meat within takes skill and gumption. At the height of the season, shuckers line up in the oyster house, don rugged work gloves and pry open the shells, shucking hundreds an hour (they get paid by the pound).
Clevon Tilghman, 53, has been working at Harrison's since he was a boy watching his parents shuck oysters there. "Young people now don't want to shuck oysters," Mr. Tilghman said. "You can tell in the oyster house. We see the old generation that's passed on, and there's no younger one to take their place. It's fading out."
OYSTER HAUNTS
Bayside Inns And Oysters All Ways
THE St. Mary's County Oyster Festival, one of the Cheseapeake Bay's largest celebrations, is being held this weekend, Oct. 16 and 17, at the fairgrounds in Leonardtown, Md.
It features a giant raw oyster bar, cooking demonstrations, live music and an oyster-shucking competition. Admission is $5 over age 12; www.usoysterfest.com.
The Harris Crab House and Seafood Restaurant in Grasonville, Md., offers waterfront dining on a deck overlooking Kent Narrows, while inside the Harris family displays an old-fashioned oyster can collection (www.harriscrabhouse.com, 410-827-9500, 433 Kent Narrows Way North).
On Tilghman Island, Harrison's Chesapeake House serves fried oyster sandwiches next to the bay (www.chesapeakehouse.com, 410-886-2121, 21551 Chesapeake House Drive).
The Wades Point Inn, between St. Michaels and Tilghman Island, is a white-columned historic inn on 120 acres with stunning views of Chesapeake Bay (www.wadespoint.com, 410-745-2500, 10090 Wades Point Road, McDaniel, Md.). Room rates range from $140 to $240.
Filled with art galleries, coffee shops and restaurants, the town of Easton makes a good base for exploring the region. The Inn at Easton (www.theinnateaston.com, 410-822-4910, 28 South Harrison Street) offers luxury accommodations in a Federal mansion in the center of town. The front parlor is home to an acclaimed restaurant whose menu relies on local ingredients. Room rates range from $175 to $395. Easton's Promise (www.eastonspromise.com, 410-820-9159, 107 Goldsborough Street) is a pleasant bed and breakfast with room rates ranging from $100 to $170.