Research Article
Anthropology
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Torben C. Rick [emailprotected], Leslie A. Reeder-Myers, Courtney A. Hofman, +11 , Denise Breitburg, Rowan Lockwood, Gregory Henkes, Lisa Kellogg, Darrin Lowery, Mark W. Luckenbach, Roger Mann, Matthew B. Ogburn, Melissa Southworth, John Wah, James Wesson, and Anson H. Hines -11
Edited by Patrick V. Kirch, University of California, Berkeley, CA, and approved April 21, 2016 (received for review January 1, 2016)
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Significance
Oysters are important organisms in estuaries around the world, influencing water quality, constructing habitat, and providing food for humans and wildlife. Following over a century of overfishing, pollution, disease, and habitat degradation, oyster populations in the Chesapeake Bay and elsewhere have declined dramatically. Despite providing food for humans for millennia, we know little about Chesapeake Bay oyster populations prior to historical fishing in the late 1800s. Using fossil, archaeological, and modern biological data, we reconstruct changes in oyster size from the Pleistocene and prior to human harvest through prehistoric Native American occupation and modern times. These data demonstrate sustainability in the Native American oyster fishery, providing insight into the future management of oysters in the Chesapeake Bay and around the world.
Abstract
Estuaries around the world are in a state of decline following decades or more of overfishing, pollution, and climate change. Oysters (Ostreidae), ecosystem engineers in many estuaries, influence water quality, construct habitat, and provide food for humans and wildlife. In North America’s Chesapeake Bay, once-thriving eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica) populations have declined dramatically, making their restoration and conservation extremely challenging. Here we present data on oyster size and human harvest from Chesapeake Bay archaeological sites spanning ∼3,500 y of Native American, colonial, and historical occupation. We compare oysters from archaeological sites with Pleistocene oyster reefs that existed before human harvest, modern oyster reefs, and other records of human oyster harvest from around the world. Native American fisheries were focused on nearshore oysters and were likely harvested at a rate that was sustainable over centuries to millennia, despite changing Holocene climatic conditions and sea-level rise. These data document resilience in oyster populations under long-term Native American harvest, sea-level rise, and climate change; provide context for managing modern oyster fisheries in the Chesapeake Bay and elsewhere around the world; and demonstrate an interdisciplinary approach that can be applied broadly to other fisheries.
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Acknowledgments
We thank numerous students and colleagues for helping to obtain and measure the oysters presented in our analysis and Krithi Sankaranarayanan for help with statistical analyses. M. Tarnowski (Maryland DNR) provided the modern Maryland data. Our archaeological research was supported by the National Geographic Society (CRE 8960-11) and the Smithsonian Institution.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published in
Classifications
- Biological Sciences
- Anthropology
- Social Sciences
- Sustainability Science
Submission history
Published online: May 23, 2016
Published in issue: June 7, 2016
Keywords
- historical baseline
- archaeological shellfish
- fossil shellfish
- marine fisheries
- environmental management
Acknowledgments
We thank numerous students and colleagues for helping to obtain and measure the oysters presented in our analysis and Krithi Sankaranarayanan for help with statistical analyses. M. Tarnowski (Maryland DNR) provided the modern Maryland data. Our archaeological research was supported by the National Geographic Society (CRE 8960-11) and the Smithsonian Institution.
Notes
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
Authors
Affiliations
Torben C. Rick1 [emailprotected]
Program in Human Ecology and Archaeobiology, Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20013;
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Leslie A. Reeder-Myers
Program in Human Ecology and Archaeobiology, Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20013;
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Courtney A. Hofman
Program in Human Ecology and Archaeobiology, Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20013;
Department of Anthropology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019;
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Denise Breitburg
Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Edgewater, MD 21037;
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Rowan Lockwood
Department of Geology, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA 23187;
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Gregory Henkes
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218;
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Lisa Kellogg
Virginia Institute of Marine Science, College of William and Mary, Gloucester Point, VA 23062;
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Darrin Lowery
Chesapeake Watershed Archaeological Resources, Easton, MD 21601;
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Mark W. Luckenbach
Virginia Institute of Marine Science, College of William and Mary, Gloucester Point, VA 23062;
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Roger Mann
Virginia Institute of Marine Science, College of William and Mary, Gloucester Point, VA 23062;
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Matthew B. Ogburn
Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Edgewater, MD 21037;
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Melissa Southworth
Virginia Institute of Marine Science, College of William and Mary, Gloucester Point, VA 23062;
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John Wah
Matapeake Soil, Shippensburg, PA 17257;
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James Wesson
Virginia Marine Resources Commission, Newport News, VA 23607
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Anson H. Hines
Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Edgewater, MD 21037;
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Notes
1
To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: [emailprotected].
Author contributions: T.C.R. and L.A.R.-M. designed research; T.C.R., L.A.R.-M., C.A.H., R.L., G.H., L.K., D.L., M.W.L., R.M., M.B.O., M.S., J. Wah, J. Wesson, and A.H.H. performed research; D.B., R.L., G.H., L.K., M.W.L., R.M., M.B.O., M.S., J. Wesson, and A.H.H. contributed data; T.C.R., L.A.R.-M., C.A.H., D.B., and R.L. analyzed data; and T.C.R., L.A.R.-M., C.A.H., D.B., and R.L. wrote the paper.
Competing Interests
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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T. C. Rick,L. A. Reeder-Myers,C. A. Hofman,D. Breitburg,R. Lockwood,G. Henkes,L. Kellogg,D. Lowery,M. W. Luckenbach,R. Mann,M. B. Ogburn,M. Southworth,J. Wah,J. Wesson,- &
A. H. Hines,
Millennial-scale sustainability of the Chesapeake Bay Native American oyster fishery, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 113 (23) 6568-6573, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1600019113 (2016).
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Millennial-scale sustainability of the Chesapeake Bay Native American oyster fishery
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