Most of us who love the Chesapeake Bay know that oysters once existed in storied numbers in an earlier time, long before poor water quality, disease, and harvesting nearly put an end to Crassostrea virginica.
Today as science has taught us so much more about these threats to the Chesapeake Bay’s health, we are thinking about an old question in a new way. Were oysters once abundant because the Bay had clear, clean water or did the Bay have clear, clean water once because oysters were abundant? Not the unsolvable chicken and the egg riddle but a real world research challenge with profound consequences for the success of Bay restoration.
To help get the word out about this more enlightened way of seeing the lowly oyster, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation commissioned this film, to explore oysters not as just another tasty critter in the Bay’s bounty but rather as a keystone species with a remarkable, and it seems, indispensable ability to heal the Bay’s troubled waters.
The now familiar but still amazing statistic that a single oyster can filter and improve the water quality of up to 50 gallons of the Chesapeake Bay in a single day is just a starting point. How exactly does an oyster filter? What gets filtered out? Where does it go?
Oysters provide three broad types of services to a healthy ecosystem and this film is loosely organized around these.
Oysters filter nutrient and sediment pollution from the water.
Oyster reefs create important natural habitat for a variety of aquatic life.
Oysters contribute to the whole of the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem making it stronger and more resilient.