"Chesapeake Oysters Being Shipped To Louisiana Shucking Houses"

"Bay’s improved harvest coincides with disasters in Gulf to reverse long-term trend of local processors bringing in bivalves from the South."

"For more than two decades, trucks pulled into the seafood-processing houses of the Eastern Shore and the Northern Neck each winter, packed with oysters from Louisiana. Maryland and Virginia shuckers needed product to feed their hungry markets, and the Chesapeake Bay’s famed oyster beds had nothing more to give.

Now, the trucks are going the other way.

Chesapeake Bay oysters have bounced back to such a degree that oyster-processing houses now send their bivalves south for shucking. The wild harvest and the farm-raised crop are on the upswing in both Maryland and Virginia. Meanwhile, oyster production in Louisiana is down by as much as 70 percent, hit by a triple whammy of Hurricane Katrina, the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and the government’s attempts to dilute chemical pollution with freshwater from other places."

Rona Kobell reports for the Bay Journal October 13, 2014.