World’s Oyster Populations Have Declined Precipitously, Study says

Roughly 85 percent of the world’s oyster beds have disappeared and in many locations oysters are functionally extinct due to overharvesting and disease, according to a new study. In a wide-ranging survey of 144 bays and 44 ecoregions globally, an international research team found that in many regions, such as the Wadden Sea in Europe and Narragansett Bay in the northeastern U.S., only 1 percent of once-abundant oyster beds remain. Even the ecoregions in North America — where most of the world’s native oysters are harvested — are in “poor” condition, according to the study published in the journal BioScience. The exception is the Gulf of Mexico, which Michael Beck, a scientist with The Nature Conservancy and the University of California, Santa Cruz, says represents “probably the last opportunity to achieve large-scale oyster reef conservation and sustainable fisheries.” The researchers urged better mapping of oyster resources and the removal of incentives to overexploit wild oyster populations.