Facing MSX parasite crisis, P.E.I. oyster industry calls on government 'to get stuff started'

The P.E.I. Shellfish Association says the solution to counteract the Island's MSX-infected water is known from the experience of other regions — and the government needs to get moving on it.

Multinucleated sphere unknown or MSX is a shellfish parasite that is harmless to humans but deadly to oysters. When the parasite hit Chesapeake Bay on the Eastern Seaboard in 1959, it killed 80 to 90 per cent of the oysters there, effectively ending the commercial fishery within a few years.

The prospect of that happening here is frightening for Bob MacLeod, president of the P.E.I. Shellfish Association.

"I definitely love it. I started playing with this when I was 12 years old and went full-time when I was 15. This has been my life," said MacLeod. "This is what I started with and this is what I hoped to retire from. I don't know. It's a pretty scary situation now."

MacLeod harvests oysters using tongs in Mill River, an area that testing shows is infected, but has not yet seen an impact in terms of oyster mortality. 

It was a different story this past spring in Bedeque Bay and the Wilmot River, he noted.

"There was areas where just everything was gone, pretty well. You'd get one live one out of a tong-full," said MacLeod.

It was a different-looking dead... There was nothing in them. They're just empty.— Bob MacLeod

"It was a different-looking dead. The top shell was still attached, they're white inside. A lot of the time, the spring of the year, if it's a winter kill or something, there'd still be meat in them. There was nothing in them. They're just empty."

Testing in July confirmed MSX as the cause. It has since been found in another half dozen locations around P.E.I., which are now under restriction. They can be harvested, but oysters and equipment can't be moved from them to another waterway in the province.

'We'll have nothing'

The experience of Chesapeake Bay is that oyster populations do eventually recover, developing a natural resistance to MSX and thriving once again.

But for that to happen naturally takes decades. When MSX arrived off the shores of Maine, the industry didn't wait. It gathered up resistant oyster seed from Chesapeake Bay and began breeding and growing it in hatcheries, accelerating the natural process.

That's a process that should have started already on P.E.I., said MacLeod.

"The government probably should be breaking ground on a half a dozen new hatcheries here on the Island to start working toward resistant seed, because without resistant seed we'll have nothing," he said.

"It's one thing to talk about but we need action. We've got to get stuff started. Every year we lose is going to be hard to make up."

For many in the industry, said MacLeod, fishing oysters is all they know, and if the oysters go away it will be hard for them to make a change into another career.