"It’s the best of times in recent memory for Chesapeake Bay oysters. It’s just the opposite, though, for the Maryland and Virginia watermen who make a living harvesting them.

The Bay’s oysters have recovered from the MSX and Dermo diseases that decimated the population a little more than two decades ago. Recent reef surveys found them more abundant and fecund than they’ve been since the diseases hit in the late 1980s.

That’s good news for the Bay because oysters are a keystone species that help filter the water. They also build reefs that provide habitat for fish, crabs and other marine life.

Until recently, the oysters’ comeback was good for watermen, too, as they enjoyed increasingly robust wild harvests. The bounty peaked in the 2022-2023 season, with landings in Maryland of 723,000 bushels — the highest in 36 years. Virginia’s harvest from public and privately leased oyster grounds likewise topped 700,000 bushels then, also the best since the late 1980s."

Timothy B. Wheeler and Jeremy Cox report for the Bay Journal March 26, 2026. [2]