Delaware is currently the only state along the Eastern Seaboard without a shellfish aquaculture industry, but it wasn’t always that way.
In 1948, shellfish farms occupied several thousand acres in Delaware’s Inland Bays. Oyster farms covered about 34 percent of Rehoboth Bay and 13 percent of Indian River Bay.
But soon, oysters in Delaware Bay were plagued by a parasitic disease known as MSX, ultimately ending oyster farming in Delaware’s Inland Bays.
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