Apalachicola Bay oyster harvesters are buoyed by recent flooding and heavy rains.
Veteran Franklin County oysterman Shannon Hartsfield says he’s hoping the shock of fresh water, and the nutrients that came with it, will offer some relief to a drought-plagued industry on the verge of collapse.
“Like right now, the salinity, it’s like 1.5. So that’s almost pure fresh water in the bay right now. Now we can lose some areas, you know it could hurt them, too much fresh water. But like I said, it could help out the other ends of the bay a lot.”
Hartsfield says it will take about a year to know what effect the flooding had.
Any improvement is overdue.
On Thursday, there was virtually no harvesting in the bay, Hartsfield said. A few stalwarts have been raking in the daily four-bag limit in deeper water, he said, but in better times, the limit was 20 bags.
The industry has been plagued for years by droughts and a key player in a water war between Florida, Georgia and Alabama. Florida is in court trying to force upstream regulators of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint river system to release more water.
