Scubaism

Tales of cownose rays in Chesapeake Bay ravaging oyster restoration sites, as well as some underwater grass revegetation projects, have become so common around the Bay that plans are in the works to turn the tables on them—by putting them on the table.

By creating a food market for rays—and therefore a fishery—some fishery managers hope to cull the ray population.

In Virginia, where the rays are most plentiful in the Bay, some consider them to be a more formidable obstacle to oyster restoration than the diseases that plague the shellfish. “In the next couple of years, it is our number one problem that we are trying to address for oyster restoration down here,” said Jim Wesson, who oversees oyster restoration efforts for the Virginia Marine Resources Commission.

But other scientists believe the solution being cooked up may be just as bad. If humans develop a taste for cownose rays, they say, it could result in taking too big of a bite out of the ray populations.

Dean Grubbs, program manager of the Shark Ecology Program at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, called efforts to create a fishery “a really bad idea.”

Rays are slow-maturing fish: Females don’t reproduce until they are 7 or 8 years old, and males are typically 6 or 7. Further, females produce just one live pup per year. That, combined with the late maturity rate, is a recipe for overfishing, according to Grubbs and some of his colleagues.