[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 61 (Monday, April 28, 2014)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E598-E599]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           RECOGNIZING VIRGINIA'S REBOUNDING OYSTER INDUSTRY

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                         HON. ROBERT J. WITTMAN

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                         Monday, April 28, 2014

  Mr. WITTMAN. Mr. Speaker, I'd like to submit for the record a March 
24, 2014, New York Times article featuring Travis and Ryan Croxton and 
their small business in the First Congressional District of Virginia, 
Rappahannock Oyster Company, which is building a historic family 
business and contributing to a healthy Chesapeake Bay.
  One of the crown jewels of our nation's natural resources, the 
Chesapeake Bay is rich in history and also provides a way of life for 
so many that live in the Bay region. I appreciate the efforts of these 
fine Virginians creating jobs, producing a fine product, all while 
working to preserve the Bay and a historic way of life.

                [From the New York Times, Mar. 24, 2014]

                           (By Julia Moskin)

                        A Chesapeake Homecoming

       Topping, VA.--When Travis and Ryan Croxton first went to 
     New York City in 2004 to market their homegrown oysters, one 
     of the few seafood places they had heard of was Le Bernardin, 
     so naturally they just showed up with a cooler at the kitchen 
     door.
       ``We really Forrest Gumped it,'' said Travis, 39. ``We had 
     no idea what we were doing.''
       Chesapeake oysters were so rare then that the chefs wanted 
     to try them on the spot. But neither Croxton, both of whom 
     had master's degrees, knew how to shuck an oyster. ``Finally 
     the chef took it out of my hands and did it himself,'' Travis 
     said.
       Oysters had almost disappeared from the Chesapeake Bay when 
     the Croxtons, first cousins and co-owners of the Rappahannock 
     Oyster Company, graduated from college. And after decades of 
     bad news about pollution, silt, disease and overfishing in 
     the bay, many locals wouldn't eat them raw. ``A whole 
     generation of Virginians grew up without virginicas,'' said 
     Peter Woods, the chef at Merroir, the Croxtons' oyster bar 
     here, where the Rappahannock River empties into the bay. 
     ``For oyster roasts, oyster stuffing, all these traditions, 
     you just couldn't get your hands on them.''
       As he spoke, Mr. Woods was shucking a dozen just-pulled 
     virginica oysters, the kind that grew wild on thick shoals 
     all around the bay when the first Europeans sailed in, the 
     wooden hulls of their ships brushing against the shells. It 
     is the same oyster that grows in Long Island Sound and on 
     Cape Cod and points north--and now, with modern aquaculture, 
     as far south as Georgia.
       ``Now they can't get enough of them,'' said Mr. Woods, 
     twirling the flesh into a plump and attractive ``Rappahannock 
     roll'' that sits up high in the shell. Food styling was not 
     part of the traditional job description for a waterman 
     (Chesapeake-speak for fisherman), but it is just one of many 
     ingenious ways that a new generation is trying to bring a 
     thriving oyster trade back to the bay.
       In 1899, when the cousins' great-grandfather leased five 
     acres of nearby river bottom and started the company, the 
     water here was still rich with the plankton and 
     phytonutrients that oysters need to live. The bay's floor was 
     inlaid with shell and rock, the sea grasses were tall, and 
     the water was brackish (part salt, part fresh, ideal for 
     oysters) like most of the coastal Chesapeake, among the 
     world's largest estuaries with more than 11,000 miles of 
     shoreline.
       But the oyster population was already cratering under 
     commercial and environmental pressure. The 20th century 
     brought more-sophisticated dredging tools and more pollution: 
     Modern farming, with its fertilizers and insecticides, dumped 
     enough nitrogen and phosphorus into the bay to bring its life 
     cycle to a near-complete halt, said Bill Goldsborough, 
     director of fisheries for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, 
     which was formed in 1967 to protect and restore the bay.
       The cleanup is proceeding (slowly), and oysters play an 
     active part. They are filter feeders, slurping 50 to 60 
     gallons of water a day and cleaning it as they go. ``For 
     protecting seafood, usually you're talking about restraint: 
     Don't eat it, don't catch it,'' Ryan Croxton said. ``But with 
     oysters, the more you eat, the more we grow, and the more bay 
     they can clean.''
       At peak trade, around 1875, 20 million bushels of wild 
     oysters were taken from the bay each year. By the late 1990s, 
     the total was 20,000. Restoration of the bay's ecosystem, 
     undertaken by multiple state, federal and private agencies, 
     was proceeding with painful slowness, and repairing the 
     oyster business was not a high priority.
       To Tommy Leggett, a local marine scientist and 
     environmental educator who is also a working waterman, the 
     low point came when the governing bodies began to consider 
     abandoning Crassostrea virginica and reseeding the bay with a 
     disease-resistant oyster native to the South China Sea, 
     Crassostrea ariakensis.

[[Page E599]]

       ``That oyster grows fast and it grows strong,'' said Mr. 
     Leggett, who was in a position to see all sides of the 
     argument. ``It reaches market size in less than a year, so 
     the whole industry was drooling over the thing. But it didn't 
     belong in our bay.'' Introducing nonnative species has often 
     led to unforeseen problems, like the proliferation of kudzu 
     and the infamous ``walking catfish'' in the Southeast.
       So Mr. Leggett, 58, became an activist for virginica 
     farming. Although aquaculture was already well established in 
     the Northeast and internationally, it hadn't caught on here, 
     partly because the wild stock was so plentiful. Long after 
     the beds up north ran out, baymen here were still pulling up 
     enough oysters (along with blue crabs, striped bass and other 
     valuable creatures) to make a living.
       But eventually, Mr. Leggett couldn't support a family on 
     his catch. ``First the hard clams tanked, then the oysters 
     tanked, then the crabs tanked,'' he said. ``I could see which 
     way the bay was going.''
       Mr. Leggett set up a demonstration oyster farm for the 
     Chesapeake Bay Foundation at the Virginia Institute of Marine 
     Science, and began to preach the advantages of aquaculture: 
     the ability to sustain the supply, predict the harvest and 
     control the quality of your catch by creating optimal growing 
     conditions at each life stage. Oysters grow from tiny spat, 
     the most juvenile stage, to market size of three inches, in 
     about 18 months.
       An oyster farm doesn't look much like a farm. The oysters 
     grow in metal cages, eating the same food in exactly the same 
     water as their wild counterparts. But they are groomed for 
     market: brought into dock, sorted and tossed in a tumbler, 
     then bagged for sale or returned to the water. The process 
     gives each oyster room to grow a full ``cup,'' which brings a 
     premium price, and keeps the shells looking pretty.
       It's a low-tech system, but it lets growers raise oysters 
     for high-end restaurants the way farmers raise vegetables: 
     with consistency in shape, size, texture and flavor; with 
     careful handling from farm to table; and with an eye to 
     beauty and shapeliness. Aquaculture has begun to turn the 
     tide back toward virginicas. Last year, for instance, the 
     take from the Chesapeake was about 400,000 bushels. 
     Anderson's Neck, Choptank Sweets and Misty Points are just a 
     few of the euphonious new oysters to hit the market, and Mr. 
     Leggett's own York Rivers fetch premium prices.
       The Croxtons did not grow up as oystermen (Travis studied 
     finance; Ryan, Southern literature), and neither did their 
     fathers. ``Grandpa told them to go to college instead of 
     messing around with oysters,'' Travis said. The boys 
     inherited the leases on the river, and by law they had to 
     grow oysters there or give them up.
       Thus began the road to Le Bernardin, the Grand Central 
     Oyster Bar and beyond. The two have reinvested what they've 
     earned, opening restaurants with high visibility, one in 
     Richmond, Va., another in the busy Union Market in 
     Washington.
       After building a steady market for their trademark oyster, 
     the Rappahannock River, they began to build a range of 
     flavors. Now they grow oysters in several locations, where 
     the water varies in salinity and depth, each producing 
     somewhat distinct flavors: crisp Stingrays in Mobjack Bay, 
     briny Old Salts in Chincoteague Bay and the oyster for the 
     people, the Barcat.
       The Barcat is an all-purpose Chesapeake oyster, distributed 
     and marketed along with the Croxtons' premium oysters, but at 
     a lower price to feed the current boom in raw bars and $1 
     oyster happy hours. Instead of growing Barcats themselves, 
     they hatched a new cooperative of oyster farmers, mostly 
     current or former watermen, that serves as an entry point to 
     aquaculture. The members can grow as few or as many as they 
     like but still go fishing and crabbing on the bay.
       These watermen, Travis said, have seen that farming helps 
     sustain both the bay and their businesses. In the last 
     decade, all the Chesapeake fisheries have become more tightly 
     controlled, and law enforcement more persistent. Illegal 
     fishing in protected waters, or at night, or out of season, 
     was a low-risk income stream for generations of watermen. 
     Now, it's far more difficult. This month, Maryland's Natural 
     Resources Police scored its first conviction for oyster 
     poaching based on evidence from a state-of-the-art 
     surveillance system it shares with the Department of Homeland 
     Security.
       Under these conditions, the peaceful, lucrative life of the 
     oyster farmer grows ever more attractive. ``Even the 
     roughest, meanest water guys notice when their friend is 
     driving a new truck,'' Travis said. ``Suddenly, they get 
     interested.''

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