'Devastating' decline in Bedeque Bay oysters has fishers worried with season set to start

The opening day of the wild oyster fishery on Prince Edward Island is May 1, and people in the industry are worried about what they are going to find after "devastating" results from test runs in Bedeque Bay earlier this month. 

Multinuclear sphere X (or MSX) was first detected in Island waters in July 2024. While the parasite is harmless to humans, it is deadly to oysters and can decimate a population.

"We got permission to accompany the province when they tested at Bedeque," said Bob MacLeod, president of the P.E.I. Shellfish Association. "We sent three dories, three directors from the association, and each director took an extra person with them and they were out two and a half or three hours.

"Plus the province was there, with three people in their boat, and the results from that wasn't very good. Between the whole crew of them and the time they spent, in total they found around 30 oysters. It was pretty devastating news, really."

MacLeod said the results are even more troubling because of where the hunt was conducted, in what he called "the heart of the spring fishery forever and ever."

About 70 to 80 fishers would traditionally head out on Bedeque Bay every spring, staying at a campground owned by the Shellfish Association. 

"There'd be millions and millions of oysters in Bedeque. That was one of the places you could go and fish over and over and over and over and you could always make a day's pay... there's oysters everywhere. And to send a crew out, with that many dories, with that many people, and come up with 30 oysters — that's just heartbreaking."

MacLeod predicted there will be a trickle-down impact on other rivers across the Island.

"You might have rivers with three or four dories — the people who fish at Bedeque are going to go somewhere," he said. "And a lot of those little rivers, you get a week, or two weeks, with only a few dories.

"Now, when you add these other dories, everything's going to get overfished."

MacLeod said the association had been focusing on building up the oyster stocks in Bedeque Bay, even after the discovery of MSX last summer. 

"Last year alone, we put 3.7 million oysters in Bedeque and Wilmot, and that will be year-old oysters that would be loonie-size roughly or a little bit bigger," MacLeod.

"They talked about resistant oysters and we figured we put a high enough volume in, and they were saying like 80 per cent would die or 70. But it would still leave enough, like, to throw spat, or survivors, and oysters for the hatcheries and hopefully bring it back someday.

"But after what they found, I don't know."