Oysters doing well here despite problems

Oysterman Carl Dipace spent this week out in the cold wash on the reefs, pulling in cluster after cluster. Because nothing says Thanksgiving in the Lowcountry like that salty slurp of meat.

But more and more, Dipace finds himself setting and harvesting single oysters instead of clusters. He's begun a business planting oyster reefs alongside waterfront homes, as an alternative to riprap or a sea wall. Somewhere in that pluff mud he has his hands on the future.

While other regions along the East Coast and across the world struggle to restore oyster beds lost to development pollution, disease or salinity changes, the South Carolina coast has kept a hold on the resource and is on the leading edge of new approaches and techniques like those.

But at the same time, the developing coast is causing more pollution problems. Funding cuts in the nosedive economy have hamstrung staffs and programs in the public agencies that manage the development and coastal waters.

Read more in tomorrow's editions of The Post and Courier.