Here is another interesting article sent to me my Randy(308).

BY TARA BOZICK - VICTORIA ADVOCATE

May 20, 2008 - 10:57 p.m.

PORT O’CONNOR - The fourth-generation oysterman hopes to dredge for oysters until the day he dies.

The commercial oyster season runs from Nov. 1 to April 30 along the Gulf Coast. But 43-year-old Robert Anthony Stringo said he didn’t really have an oyster season in San Antonio Bay this year.

“A lot of places I’ve seen, the oysters were just dead,” Stringo said.

To make a profit he needs to collect 40 bushels, or between 100 and 110 pounds, of oysters each eight-hour working day. This past season, Stringo collected between 30 and 40 bushels a day. He now works odd jobs to supplement his income.

Stringo attributes the “awful” season to summer flooding and expects the oysters to recover in the next year and a half.

Texas Parks and Wildlife biologist Norman Boyd agrees. Boyd said the San Antonio Bay oyster reefs are healthy, but the oysters suffered because of heavy summer rains.

Because San Antonio Bay is small and relatively shallow, large amounts of freshwater flowing from the rivers can really decrease the salinity levels, Boyd said.

“The oysters took a beating last year with 55 to 70 inches of rain,” Boyd said.

When oysters encounter freshwater, they close up like a clam, Boyd said. But they can only stay closed for 10 days to two weeks as their metabolic waste products build up inside them. If they open, they die from the freshwater.

The summer floods may also have delayed the oyster spawning, the biologist in the coastal fisheries division in Port O’Connor said.

The salinity levels are back up and if everything stays normal, the oysters will prosper the season after next, Boyd said. He even expects better quality oysters than before the flooding, as the rains brought in an abundance of nutrients.

The winter season this year won’t be a “bumper crop,” Boyd said.

Because of the lack of oysters in San Antonio Bay, John Williams harvested oysters in Copano and Aransas bays to provide product for his and his wife’s business, Linda T’s Fresh Shrimp off state Highway 185 in Port O’Connor. But toxins produced by an algae bloom forced the Department of State Health Services to close those bays and San Antonio Bay in March. San Antonio Bay reopened April 5.2

“It’s been a bad year,” Williams said. “I don’t think we can make it.”

Williams, 53, banked on oysters for profits while high fuel costs ate away his shrimp income. But, he added, his retail shop only survived so far because he caught some large white shrimp, around 70 to 100 pounds in a day.

High fuel costs, dead oysters, algae blooms - it’s just one thing after another, Linda Tippit said.

The oysters will be back, the veteran Stringo said.

“Just leave them alone for a year.”

But even positive-thinking Stringo worries he may not afford to continue in his line of work.

“I would like to stay shrimping and oystering the rest of my life, but I don’t think it’s going to happen,” Stringo said.

Tara Bozick is a reporter for the Advocate. Contact her at 361-580-6504 or tbozick@vicad.com.