A several year moratorium on wild Chesapeake oysters would not be a bad idea. Allow the population to grow while supplying the demand through farmed oysters, as you suggest. That, however, would mean start-up costs, which would be passed on to the consumer, until the wild oysters were back in circulation, maybe around 2016 or so. But why incur the high costs of farming oysters when you can gather them cheaper? Until the wild oysters are given a break, and a chance to bounce back, and made illegal to harvest for a period of years, the potential oyster farmers out there will continue to run their cost-benefit analysis and see that it’s better just to let mother nature do the work. If we harness our own nature, we will create a demand for farmed oysters and help us recover the heavily impacted wild population. Once that wild population is back to a healthy level, why not establish a system for allowing them to be gathered, keeping in mind, we don’t want to over-gather again. I’m not saying stop eating wild oysters forever. I’m saying, let’s conserve them.

Another point: once you take an oyster out of the Bay and put it in the food supply chain, you are making a decision to remove it from the filtration supply chain. Maybe we could approach this like trees: determine the optimal population of oysters, let it grow beyond that for a buffer, and for every oyster gathered “plant” another one. These little animals are the best water filters we know of, and they are filtering an enormous estuary, which is hugely important, as it’s where much of sealife (food) in the mid-Atlantic starts its lifecycle. If the oysters go, the estuary goes, and from there, the entire system can collapse. No joke. Banks and cars pale in comparison.

I would say the ruination of the oceans is far more important to us, as a species, than the deforestation of rain forests. If I had to make that tough choice, I would say, save the oceans over the trees. Why? Well, primarily, because the oceans are where all the oxygen is produced. Algae convert much, much more oxygen than trees.

As far a pearl culture goes, I think it is a different kind of oyster, and I think they actually plant the grain of sand inside the oyster. This is for commercial pearls. Every now and then, if you eat raw oysters, you’ll find a little nub of calcium which is the oyster’s way of covering the foreign body lodged inside if, usually sand or grit, to protect itself from contamination.

Maybe farm pearls too. I suppose you need different species of oyster for pearls and for eating. Maybe we could engineer an oyster that tastes good, makes pearls, and does double duty cleaning up the ocean.

And don’t forget to tote your totes to the grocery store and any other fine establishment you may purchase goods from.