BILOXI, MS (AP) — The Governor's Oyster Council, created by Gov. Phil Bryant just over a week ago, is tasked to recommend by June 2 how best to restore Mississippi's flagging oyster industry.
"This particular industry is not hitting on all cylinders. And our job is to hopefully give it a chance to get jump started and moving back forward," Council Chairman Dave Dennis said at a meeting Tuesday.
The oyster harvest in Mississippi has declined by more than 80 percent in the past decade following a string of manmade and natural disasters. In 2004, fishermen harvested nearly a half million sacks of oysters. Ten years later, that number was just over 78,000 sacks.
The council is divided into three committees: environment, aquaculture and economy.
"We want to reclaim the title of seafood capital of the world. I know that's ambitious, but that's where we want to go," said Jamie Miller, executive director of the state Department of Marine Resources.
Mississippi is "basically in a crisis mode," said Chris Nelson of Bon Secour Fisheries, an Alabama company that often trucks in Mississippi oysters. He said if the industry continues to decline, processors soon will be downsizing into small-scale operations that would supply mostly white-tablecloth restaurants that charge $3 an oyster.
"We're actually bringing down oysters from Maryland several months of the year just to have something to work with. That really offends my sensibilities to have to process an oyster in the shell out of the Chesapeake. And the way they're producing it is they got together and did something just like this. This type of effort bore a lot of fruit in the Chesapeake."
Several of the experts echoed that sentiment, including Miller, who said the council would use the best programs that have been proven to work in the Gulf and throughout the country.
"If there are proven practices, strategies and management plans that work," he said, "we want to make sure they can work in Mississippi. But we're not here to create something new and unproven."
The council plans to have meetings in each of the coastal counties.
