To the editor:
As a commercial diver operating in Salem Bay for the last 55 years I’ve been an acute observer of all things marine-life related. I’ve also been a Marblehead shellfish constable for the last 40 years. This letter is in response to the latest noble efforts to reintroduce the native oyster population. (“From tiny oysters, big hopes for healthier waters”, Current Sept. 14)
Since the mid 1980s our local waters have been home to a huge population of European flat oysters. I started noticing what I thought were rock scallops here and there but it wasn’t until I was doing work in Wyman Cove in 1987 that I witnessed a massive population blanketing the bottom. Bagging up a dozen or so, I brought them to the state’s Cat Cove Marine Lab. The biologists were shocked to see this new invasive species in our waters. My theory is they came from the Shetland Park facility where at the time a company called Sea Plantations had rented two floors out and were producing a variety of marine animals for universities along the East Coast.
I believe they were raising these oysters, sucking the seawater from the South River, circulating it through their tanks and discharging back out. The spawn from these oysters is what created the now billions populating all the gravel inclines surrounding our Salem Bay coastline.
This new effort may very well create a new variety of cross-bred oyster known in the future as the “Marblehead variety.” One can only hope, but in the meantime educating the local population as to what lurks under our local waters should be saluted.
Ray Bates
Cherry Street
