For months, the future has looked uncertain for an Eastern Shore oyster hatchery instrumental in the bivalves’ resurgence in the Chesapeake Bay.
Last fall, President Donald Trump’s administration slashed support for the hatchery, part of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science’s Horn Point Laboratory outside Cambridge, jeopardizing the work of scientists who have churned out billions of spat — baby oysters — for the bay in the last two decades.
But there’s a glimmer of hope for the oyster incubator in the wake of a bill recently approved by Congress. The legislation, since signed into law by Trump, could restore funding for the hatchery, at least temporarily.
Last month, lawmakers on Capitol Hill approved $6.1 billion over the next fiscal year for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which funds the Horn Point facility. The bill includes a $1.5 million increase for Chesapeake Bay oysters over a funding package from two years ago.
While the bill doesn’t explicitly earmark money for the UMCES facility, Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who helped secure the bay oyster appropriation, said he intended for the measure to balance the hatchery’s budget.
“We have every expectation that these funds will go to Horn Point,” the Democrat said.
Still, he acknowledged, “until the money is in the bank, it’s an expectation, not yet a guarantee.”
It remains unclear why NOAA cut the hatchery’s funding in the first place. The agency has not explained its decision in response to emailed questions.
NOAA spokesperson Rachel Hager said in a statement last week that the agency is finalizing spending plans and will confirm funding levels for specific programs later this year. Still, Hager expressed support for rebuilding oyster reefs, pointing to their benefits for commercial and recreational fishing on the Chesapeake Bay.
“Oyster restoration is a priority for NOAA, and we are proud of our Chesapeake Bay partnerships supporting this objective,” Hager said.
UMCES President Fernando Miralles-Wilhelm spoke briefly on the challenges facing the Horn Point Oyster Hatchery at a legislative hearing this month in Annapolis.
Trump administration rollbacks have resulted in a 10% reduction in UMCES’ grants and contracts, Miralles-Wilhelm reported in written testimony.
“Perhaps the most significant” of these rollbacks, he said, was an almost 50% reduction — about $340,000 — in funding for the Horn Point Oyster Hatchery, with plans to eliminate the facility’s federal support entirely within two years.
Now that Washington leaders have locked in NOAA’s funding, the UMCES president said he hopes to see the hatchery’s budget restored.
“We are working diligently to plug the funding gap,” he said.
Until then, though, Horn Point scientists aren’t counting their pearls.
Potentially complicating matters, the Eastern Shore’s representative in Congress has sent mixed signals regarding the hatchery.
Rep. Andy Harris, the lone Republican in Maryland’s congressional delegation, arranged for NOAA fisheries staff to visit Horn Point last year to see potential impacts of funding cuts — a step the UMCES president saw as an indication of the congressman’s support.
Yet Harris told the Chesapeake Bay Journal last month that he supported the funding cut for the hatchery, which he said focuses too much on rebuilding reefs in oyster sanctuaries and not enough on public fisheries and those who depend on them.
“President Trump has been clear that domestic food production matters,” he said in a statement to the Bay Journal, “and I support shifting federal funding toward programs that support watermen, rebuild public fisheries and protect the Chesapeake Bay.”
While Harris voted in favor of the NOAA funding package last month, his office would not comment on the record for this story.
Most of the oysters hatched at Horn Point go to sanctuaries around the upper Chesapeake Bay, but about a quarter of its spat are for commercial farms, with many harvested for stores and restaurants.
Others in Maryland’s delegation to D.C. have pushed to see funding restored for the hatchery, the largest of its kind in the country and among the largest in the world.
Rep. Sarah Elfreth, a longtime Chesapeake Bay advocate, said she’s committed to exploring “every possible avenue” to ensure that the hatchery’s work continues uninterrupted.
NOAA’s congressional appropriation, which holds the agency’s funding about even with the year before, comes after Trump imposed sweeping cuts to the science agency and recommended slashing its budget by roughly $1.7 billion.
The bill includes a provision requiring NOAA to brief Congress within 90 days on its work to restore Chesapeake oysters, and Van Hollen expressed confidence that the money will get to Horn Point.
“It was a gratuitous cut,” Van Hollen said. “We will find out going forward whether it was the result of fast work and sloppiness or something else.”
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