A state ban on the cultivation of oyster beds in the Keyport Harbor would be lifted under a bill working its way through the state Legislature.
The bill, sponsored by state Sen. Gerald Cardinale (R-Passaic/Bergen), would permit the NY/NJ Baykeeper’s Eastern Oyster Reintroduction Feasibility Study to return to Keyport Harbor.
The project was halted in 2010 when the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) banned the cultivation of commercial shellfish in contaminated waters.
DEP Press Officer Bob Considine said because of concerns expressed by the federal Food and Drug Administration over patrolling of the oyster beds, the DEP stands by its ban.
“In 2010, the FDA had threatened federal sanctions or a shutdown of the entire shellfish industry in New Jersey — which is about a $1 billion industry — because [NY/NJ Baykeeper] wasn’t doing the required monitoring of these beds in a contaminated water body.
“Those concerns remain today, as our conservation officers make arrest of illegal harvesters in restricted waters every year.
“We do recognize that this type of research can potentially have a positive impact to the health of contaminated waterways, but we’re not putting that ahead of risking people’s health by possibly having one of these oysters enter the marketplace.”
Considine added that the DEP is considering adopting new regulations that would allow pilot research projects such as the Baykeeper’s to “occur with a commitment to security measures” that would comply with FDA regulations. In a May 6 interview, Cardinale downplayed the DEP’s concerns that farming oysters and other shellfish in contaminated waters would encourage poaching, which led to the 2010 state ban that aims to protect public health and New Jersey’s lucrative shellfish industry.
“It’s pretty farfetched to think that anybody is going to be able to poach those oysters,” Cardinale said. “They’re very difficult to find if you don’t know where they are. Secondly, they’re in locked cages. … You couldn’t just take them out.”
Debbie Mans, executive director of the NY/NJ Baykeeper, said losing the permit to cultivate oyster beds in Keyport Harbor dealt a significant blow to the project by severely limiting the available research area, adding that Cardinale’s bill would be a step to get the research back on track in earnest.
“This bill would overturn the complete ban that the DEP placed on the harvest of commercial shellfish in waters they deem contaminated,” Mans said. “It’s not too clear where that is, but it certainly includes much of the Hudson- Raritan estuary.”
According to Dr. Beth Ravit, co-director of Rutgers University’s Center for Urban Environmental Sustainability and a researcher working on the oyster study, the goal of the project is to better understand the conditions in which oysters could flourish and then promote population growth in areas exhibiting those conditions.
Ravit said the Eastern oyster provides several ecological benefits, including the ability to individually filter up to 50 gallons of water per day, as well as their propensity to fuse their shells together to create an “oyster reef.”
According to Ravit, these reefs are used by other species as shelter and are also able to help mitigate threats posed by stormwater surges.
In addition, oysters reduce turbidity in the water, which allows additional sunlight to support the growth of phytoplankton, a staple of the marine food web, and seafloor plants. They also increase the amount of oxygen in the water, Ravit said.
“Enough of these animals will change the chemical and physical characteristics of their habitat in a good way,” Ravit said.
Researchers working on the Baykeeper project sought to better understand where oyster populations could thrive in a bid to harness the animal’s natural behavior to help rehabilitate the Hudson-Raritan estuary.
“For 10 years, [the Baykeeper] had a permit from DEP to plant oysters in the Keyport Harbor,” Ravit said. “They were trying to reintroduce them into the Raritan Bay, where there used to be hundreds of acres of oyster beds.
“In 2010, the state of New Jersey revoked the Baykeeper’s permit … because they did not have enough people to patrol Raritan Bay to make sure these oysters were not being illegally harvested.”
By 2009, there were nearly 50,000 oysters in the Keyport Harbor cages, she said. However, when the DEP revoked the permit, researchers were forced to kill about 30,000 of the shellfish.
“Baykeeper had to give back federal money; people lost their jobs,” Ravit said.
Since then, the project has continued at an alternate location. Researchers contacted Capt. David Harrison, former commander of Naval Weapons Station Earle in Leonardo, asking if the program could continue in the waters off the base’s pier. Washington ultimately agreed, as did the DEP on the grounds that the oyster bed would be routinely patrolled. In the summer of 2013, work began at the new site.
However, while the alternative site was a godsend in a time of emergency, Mans said it is far from ideal.
“It’s good that we’re at Earle, and we really enjoy working with the Navy. … But we’re only there because [the federal government] takes over the responsibility from the state for the patrols,” Mans said. “So, rather than science telling us where to go, we’re going where DEP policy tells us to go.
“This bill would allow us to do our research and restoration efforts where it makes the most sense ecologically.”
The Baykeeper monitors the Hudson- Raritan Estuary, home to more than 150 species of fish and shellfish, 330 bird species and 15 million people.
The estuary includes Monmouth, Middlesex and Hudson counties, as well as New York’s Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island and Queens.
According to Ravit, researchers introduced 250,000 immature oysters last summer in addition to the unknown number of adults already at the site.
Ravit’s hope is that the research can be used to reintroduce a thriving oyster population throughout the 16,212-square-mile Hudson-Raritan estuary, which has been degraded by more than a century of urbanization and industrialization.
“We have changed this estuary so much in the last 100 years,” she said, adding that research is needed to determine where conditions are best for raising healthy oysters.
“As a scientist, the idea that the state I live in would ban research — I find that not understandable.”
Oysters are known as a “keystone species,” meaning they alter their environment to suit their needs. From reducing excess nutrients and contaminated sediment in the water to forming oyster reefs that act as habitats for other species and “speed bumps” against storm surges, Mans said oysters provide myriad benefits to the surrounding ecosystem.
The Senate Environment and Energy Committee voted 4-0 to introduce the bill.
According to Cardinale, the bill would be brought before the full state Senate at the discretion of Senate President Stephen Sweeney. Cardinale added that a companion bill has been referred to committee in the state Assembly.