![]() Witzke’s used to it, though, and didn’t skip a beat.Ĭans with zip-ties have holes in them to let water drain as they sit outside of restaurants. The containers stored inside are bad, the ones stored outside - open to the elements and subject to filling with water - are noxious. The aroma of a full can of old shucked oyster shells is nauseating. Each time he picks up a restaurant’s container of shell, he replaces it with a fresh can. He’s refined his collection practice down to labeling certain cans with zip ties and has developed a walking route among the downtown restaurants. 9 - as he does almost every Thursday - Witzke set off to pick up shell from restaurants on the alliance’s Annapolis route. This year, Price said, the shell alliance is on track to collect 34,000 bushels, with its grand total set to eclipse 140,000 bushels since the program’s inception in 2010. Today, the alliance boasts over 336 members regionwide and counting, Price said. The shell recycling program began in 2010 with 22 restaurants. Shell recycled by the alliance accounts for about a third of hatchery operations’ total demand of approximately 100,000 bushels per year, according to Tom Price, Shell Recycling Alliance operations manager. And hatchery-grown larvae need shells to survive, which highlights the importance of Witzke and his colleagues’ work. Oyster planting can’t happen without hatchery-grown larvae. Ready for deployment, the spat - baby oysters once they’ve attached to shell - are loaded onto a vessel and dumped onto oyster beds in the country’s largest oyster restoration project in and around the Choptank River. The tanks are connected by an elaborate network of pipes, which pump phytoplankton-rich river water through the cages, providing a food source for the young bivalves. “If the numbers look good,” she said, “we’ll go ahead and turn the water on” and then schedule planting. The larvae are introduced to the tank and regulated closely by hatchery staff, who take samples to measure how many attached to shells, Alexander said. The containers of shell are then added to outdoor setting tanks. It is aged for a year “to get rid of any organic material,” washed with high-pressure hoses, and placed in metal cages containers, Hatchery Manager Stephanie Alexander told the University of Maryland’s Capital News Service. The shell Witzke and his colleagues recycle is delivered to the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science Horn Point Oyster Hatchery in Cambridge, Maryland. The recycled shell is also used to bolster state and federally sponsored oyster restoration in Chesapeake Bay tributaries on the Eastern Shore of Maryland - the largest oyster restoration project in the country. After a year, the homeowners return the oysters and the bivalves are planted in oyster sanctuaries to improve water quality, among other benefits. The effort protects baby oysters in their most vulnerable stages. Some of the shells are used for the Marylanders Grow Oysters program, which equips willing waterfront households with cages of oysters to hang from their docks. He added: “It comes down to believing in the mission.” “Sure I’m just dumping the shells,” he said, “but each one will become a home for 10 baby oysters.” While Witzke picks up, transports and unloads shell, he keeps the bigger picture in mind. “Loving to fish and crab and even eat some of the seafood that we get from it has opened my eyes to the plight of the bay and how, consequently, there are efforts out there to bring it back.” “We’ve also had moments where we can’t necessarily go swimming in some of those tributaries because of bacteria and other things,” he said. He’s also seen the Chesapeake’s condition change. ![]() “I’ve always gotten to see how life on the bay is.” Witzke grew up near Salisbury, Maryland, “always going to tributaries of the bay, specifically the Nanticoke and living near the Wicomico,” he said. Witzke works for the Shell Recycling Alliance, an Oyster Recovery Partnership program that collects discarded shell from restaurants and seafood distributors in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and parts of Virginia. “Just me individually,” Witzke said, “I pick up 100-150 restaurants” per week. Time to pick up smelly barrels of shells from roughly 30 restaurants in Annapolis. The bearded man hopped into a Ford F-550, fired up the truck - covered with oyster-camouflage - and shifted it into gear. At 7:30 a.m., outside of the Oyster Recovery Partnership office and by the trunk of his 2008 Toyota Corolla, Wayne Witzke traded his slides for a pair of brown rubber boots.
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