Scientists, oystermen, and Maryland oyster conservation politics, 1880--1969: A study of two cultures

This dissertation explores the weak role of scientific expertise in natural resource politics at the state level by examining Maryland oyster conservation debates from 1880 to 1969. It focuses on relations between scientists who supported private cultivation of Chesapeake oysters, and resource harvesters—oystermen—who sought to maintain their control over the public-domain oyster beds. In the 1890s, support for oyster leasing coalesced among scientists and urban constituents. Thanks to Maryland's county-unit system of legislation, and the geographical predominance of tidewater counties, oystermen possessed disproportionately high representation. Policy-makers privileged the oystermen's worldviews when constructing oyster laws. Yet pro-leasers pressed their cause throughout the decades, helping to make the oyster the most legislated-upon topic in the state's history.; Following drastic harvest declines between the 1880s and 1920s, legislators became more receptive to the idea of scientific management, but only to the extent that it did not demand radical social change in the watermen's culture. Legislators instituted a program of public cultivation based on replenishing depleted oyster bars with brood stock and shell substrate. However, administrators did not fully utilize biological criteria. Furthermore, legislators' refusal to provide adequate funding for the program stimulated scientists in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s to renew their leasing campaigns.; This study argues that by embracing a solution that watermen would never accept, scientists contributed to the deterioration of the oyster fishery. Convinced that leasing would provide the opening wedge for corporate overlords and depress prices via overproduction, watermen fought leasing proposals tooth and nail. They believed that scientists' support for such a radical plan revealed their hopeless disconnection with reality. Although the re-shelling program showed that oyster conservation need not entail privatization, scientists' devotion to leasing prejudiced watermen against the idea of scientific management. In the 1950s a few isolated groups of oystermen instituted their own cooperative leasing plans, thereby showing that resource harvesters are not inherently shortsighted. But because the majority of watermen believed that oyster beds would regenerate on their own or with limited re-shelling efforts, the legislature did not pass needed science-based programs. Habitat destruction and overfishing continued as the tragic result.