The fate of Texas's oysters in the wake of Hurricane Harvey seems an insignificant sidelight to the devastation being wrought by the storm.
But the storm's potential negative effects on these primitive mollusks crucial to bay ecosystems, the state's multibillion-dollar recreational fishery and multimillion-dollar commercial fishery press home the reasoning and urgency behind actions coincidentally taken as Harvey percolated in the Gulf.
Last Thursday, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission adopted a package of changes in regulations governing the harvest of oysters, tightening rules governing commercial take and closing approximately 2,900 acres of the state's 48,000 acres of oyster habitat to all oyster harvest, commercial and recreational.
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