A COMPARISON OF THE EFFECTS OF HURRICANE AGNES IN 1972 IN THREE MAJOR OYSTERING LOCATIONS

Hurricane Agnes in June, 1972, was the costliest one to strike the U. S. east coast up to that year.  Extending from Florida to New York, Agnes featured heavy rains that caused some rivers to crest at least 15 feet (about 5 m) above normal.  Destructive floods in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, Pennsylvania and other areas ruined agricultural crops and many homes and other properties.  Agnes had huge effects on the oyster industry, but they differed sharply from one another in the three major oyster-producing areas, namely, Long Island Sound, Delaware Bay, and Chesapeake Bay.  In Connecticut, Agnes affected oyster setting.  Persistent winds from the north, rather than from their usual southerly direction, blew the large water mass containing oyster larvae off its shore, away from the oyster beds, and across Long Island Sound to the bays on the north side of Long Island.  Oyster sets were negligible in Connecticut, but some occurred in the Long Island bays.  In Delaware Bay, effects of the hurricane led to a heavy oyster set on the beds that was far more intense than it had been for many years.   The likely reason for this was that the fresh waters killed the predacious ghost anemones, Diadumene leucolena and mud crabs.  The shells received more spat and their survival from crab predation was high.  In Chesapeake Bay, a large quantity of sediment was deposited on the bottom, especially in its northern region, and most waters became too fresh for oysters to reproduce.  For instance, in Virginia, the James River that had yielded about two million bushels of seed oysters each year, became too fresh to produce an oyster set.  In sum, the Connecticut and Chesapeake Bay oyster industries suffered from near failure of the 1972 year-class of seed to appear, whereas the Delaware Bay oyster industry gained a large 1972 crop of seed, larger than usual.