GRASONVILLE, Md. - A partnership sealed Thursday between government and science will research ways to restore oysters and aquatic grasses to a bay literally in dire need of new life.

"We've lost the window of opportunity for caution," said Judy Wink, executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Environmental Center, "so we've got to do something now."

In a waterside tent here, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich confirmed the long-standing partnership between the center and the state's Department of Natural Resources, stressing the strain on the watershed in the face of development.

"Maryland will grow," said Ehrlich, "and those pressures will be there." Maryland must respond, he said, with nutrient removal, oyster reintroduction and other revitalization methods.

While the state grapples with the proposed introduction of non-native, disease-resistant oysters to the watershed, the center will begin building a five-acre native oyster bed next week, in hopes of applying its findings on a wider scale.

The project may not keep the oysters free from disease, Wink said, but will develop habitat in a bay too sandy in spots to support them.

Since Dermo and MSX were first discovered in bay oysters 50 years ago, the state's oyster harvest has progressively plunged to record lows. The 2.5 million-bushel average in the 1970s dropped to 25,000 bushels this past year.

"The plight of the watermen, it's pathetic," said Wink. "They can't harvest enough."

For its experimental reef, the center will use stones the size of softballs, said Chris Judy, DNR shellfish program director, to support native oysters harvested from a University of Maryland hatchery. In 2002, the center began a smaller oyster reef, cobbled together from the rubble of Baltimore's Memorial Stadium.

"This is going to be a demonstration of every kind of project you can do in Maryland to fix the Chesapeake Bay," said Torrey Brown, center president.

Judy said the research conducted at the center may not, however, be applicable to the whole bay, because salinity levels near the center differ from those elsewhere in the bay.

The 500-acre center also researches the cultivation of submerged aquatic vegetation, the use of reef balls (holey concrete balls that serve as fish habitat) and the construction of living shorelines.

The vegetation, said Wink, is particularly important because the grasses produce oxygen, and - like oysters - filter pollutants. But sediment runoff and excess nutrients have choked out many of these grasses, and the center may farm them on a large scale.

Even though no time should be wasted in preserving the bay, Wink said, scientists should not be tempted to rush their research into practice.

"We're right at the crossroads," she said. "We take one step in any direction . . . that one step we take could be a wrong one."

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Copyright © 2004 University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism