Ecosystem stability and Native American oyster harvesting along the Atlantic Coast of the United States

Victor D Thompson; Torben Rick; Carey J Garland; David Hurst Thomas; Karen Y Smith; Sarah Bergh; Matt Sanger; Bryan Tucker; Isabelle Lulewicz; Anna M Semon; John Schalles; Christine Hladik; Clark Alexander; Brandon T Ritchison

doi:10.1126/sciadv.aba9652

Ecosystem stability and Native American oyster harvesting along the Atlantic Coast of the United States

Sci Adv. 2020 Jul 10;6(28):eaba9652. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aba9652. eCollection 2020 Jul.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ University of Georgia, Department of Anthropology, 250A Baldwin Hall, Athens, GA 30602, USA.
² Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20013, USA.
³ American Museum of Natural History, Division of Anthropology, 79th Street at Central Park West, New York, NY 10024, USA.
⁴ South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, 1000 Assembly Street, Columbia, SC 29201, USA.
⁵ South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of South Carolina, 1321 Pendleton Street, Columbia, SC 29208, USA.
⁶ Union Institute & University, 440 East McMillan Street, Cincinnati, OH 45206, USA.
⁷ National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20013, USA.
⁸ Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Historic Preservation Division, 2610 GA Hwy 155, SW, Stockbridge, GA 30281, USA.
⁹ Department of Biology, Creighton University, 2500 California Plaza, Omaha, NE 68178, USA.
¹⁰ Georgia Southern University, Department of Geology and Geography, P.O Box 8149, Statesboro, GA 30460, USA.
¹¹ Skidaway Institute of Oceanography, Ocean Science Circle, Savannah, GA 31411, USA.
¹² Department of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 607 S Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.

Abstract

The eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica) is an important proxy for examining historical trajectories of coastal ecosystems. Measurement of ~40,000 oyster shells from archaeological sites along the Atlantic Coast of the United States provides a long-term record of oyster abundance and size. The data demonstrate increases in oyster size across time and a nonrandom pattern in their distributions across sites. We attribute this variation to processes related to Native American fishing rights and environmental variability. Mean oyster length is correlated with total oyster bed length within foraging radii (5 and 10 km) as mapped in 1889 and 1890. These data demonstrate the stability of oyster reefs despite different population densities and environmental shifts and have implications for oyster reef restoration in an age of global climate change.

Copyright © 2020 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC).

Publication types

Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't