Scientists find sustainable solutions for oysters in the future by looking into the past

Oysters are keystone organisms in estuaries around the world, influencing water quality, constructing habitat and providing food for humans and wildlife. Yet their populations in the Chesapeake Bay and elsewhere have dramatically declined after more than a century of overfishing, pollution, disease and habitat degradation. Smithsonian scientists and colleagues, however, have conducted the first bay-wide, millennial-scale study of oyster harvesting in the Chesapeake, revealing a sustainable model