Millennial-scale sustainability of the Chesapeake Bay Native American oyster fishery (2025)

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)

May 23, 2016

113 (23) 6568-6573

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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

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Vol. 113 | No. 23
June 7, 2016

PubMed: 27217572

Classifications

  1. Biological Sciences
  2. Anthropology
  3. Social Sciences
  4. Sustainability Science

Submission history

Published online: May 23, 2016

Published in issue: June 7, 2016

Keywords

  1. historical baseline
  2. archaeological shellfish
  3. fossil shellfish
  4. marine fisheries
  5. 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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Cite this article

  • 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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