The Vatican is celebrating the big-bang theory. That’s not as out of this world as it sounds.

The Vatican Observatory has invited leading scientists and cosmologists to talk black holes, gravitational waves and space-time singularities as it honors the late Jesuit cosmologist considered one of the fathers of the idea that the universe began with a gigantic explosion.

The Tuesday-Friday conference honoring Monsignor George Lemaitre is being held at the Vatican Observatory, founded by Pope Leo XIII in 1891 to help correct the notion that the Roman Catholic Church was hostile to science. The perception has persisted in some circles since Galileo’s heresy trial 400 years ago, even though the observatory and Catholic universities around the globe have produced top-notch science over the centuries.

In 1927, Lemaitre was the first to explain that the receding of distant galaxies was the result of the expansion of the universe, a result he obtained by solving equations of Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

Lemaitre’s theory was known as the “primeval atom,” but it is more commonly known today as the big-bang theory.

“He understood that looking backward in time, the universe should have been originally in a state of high energy density, compressed to a point like an original atom from which everything started,” according to a press release from the Observatory.

The head of the Vatican Observatory, Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno, says Lemaitre’s research proves that you can believe in God and the big-bang theory.

“Lemaitre himself was very careful to remind people – including Pope Pius XII – that the creative act of God is not something that happened 13.8 billion years ago. It’s something that happens continually,” Consolmagno said Monday.  

Believing merely that God created the big bang means “you’ve reduced God to a nature god, like Jupiter throwing lightning bolts. That’s not the God that we as Christians believe in,” he said.

Christians, he said, believe in a supernatural God who is responsible for the existence of the universe, while “our science tells us how he did it.”
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From: MeNeedIt

Neither Bill Clinton nor James Patterson has ever tried something like this before.

The former president and the best-selling novelist are collaborating on a thriller, “The President is Missing,” to come out June 2018 as an unusual joint release from rival publishers — Alfred A. Knopf and Little, Brown and Co. In a statement Monday provided to The Associated Press, the publishers called the book “a unique amalgam of intrigue, suspense and behind-the-scenes global drama from the highest corridors of power. It will be informed by details that only a president can know.”

Knopf has long been Clinton’s publisher, and Patterson has been with Little, Brown for decades. “The President is Missing” is the first work of fiction by Clinton, whose best-known book is the million-selling “My Life.” For Patterson, it’s the chance to team up with a friend who knows as well as anyone about life in the White House.

“Working with President Clinton has been the highlight of my career, and having access to his firsthand experience has uniquely informed the writing of this novel,” Patterson said in a statement. “I’m a storyteller, and President Clinton’s insight has allowed us to tell a really interesting one. It’s a rare combination — readers will be drawn to the suspense, of course, but they’ll also be given an inside look into what it’s like to be president.”

“Working on a book about a sitting president — drawing on what I know about the job, life in the White House and the way Washington works — has been a lot of fun,” Clinton said in a statement. “And working with Jim has been terrific. I’ve been a fan of his for a very long time.”

A political release from the 1990s had a similar arrangement: Random House and Simon & Schuster jointly published the nonfiction “All’s Fair” by husband-and-wife campaign consultants James Carville and Mary Matalin.

Knopf and Little, Brown declined to offer any more details about the book, including whether it refers to President Donald Trump, who last fall defeated Clinton’s wife, Hillary Clinton. Financial terms for the novel, which the authors began working on late in 2016, were not disclosed. Clinton and Patterson share the same literary representative, Washington attorney Robert Barnett, who negotiated the deal. “The President is Missing” will be co-written, co-published and co-edited — Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group chairman Sonny Mehta is working on the manuscript with CEO Michael Pietsch of Hachette Book Group, the parent company of Little, Brown.

“This is a blockbuster collaboration between two best-selling authors,” Mehta and Pietsch said in a joint statement, “and the pages we’ve read to date are riveting, full of intricate plotting and detail. This is a book that promises to entertain and delight millions of readers around the world, and we are thrilled to be working on it together and with our esteemed houses supporting us.”

Presidents and ex-presidents have been turning out books for a long time, but novels are rare. Jimmy Carter, a prolific and wide-ranging author since leaving the White House in 1981, released the historical novel “The Hornet’s Nest” in 2003. A presidential daughter, Margaret Truman, had a successful career with her “Capital Crime” mystery series.

Clinton’s other books include “Giving” and “Back to Work.” Patterson and various co-authors complete several works a year, ranging from young adult novels to the Alex Cross crime series.

Penguin Random House — which has published both Clinton and Patterson — has U.K., Commonwealth and European rights to the collaboration.

“This unprecedented collaboration with its compelling mix of insider knowledge and edge-of-the-seat suspense is utterly irresistible,” said Susan Sandon, divisional managing director at Penguin Random House in a statement.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

An Iranian student who happens to look uncannily like soccer great Lionel Messi, nearly ended up in jail for disrupting public order.

A photo event in Reza Paratesh’s home town of Hamedan attracted so many fans that police had to close it down, according to AFP.

Paratesh’s brush with fame came after his father convinced him to pose for a photo wearing Messi’s number 10 Barcelona jersey and send it to a sports website.

That worked out well as Paratesh became a popular television guest and even got a modeling job.

“Now people really see me as the Iranian Messi and want me to mimic everything he does. When I show up somewhere, people are really shocked,” he said. “I’m really happy that seeing me makes them happy and this happiness gives me a lot of energy.”

Paratesh is not a professional soccer player, but he’s reportedly working on some dribbling tricks to make his impersonation more realistic.

He said he’d like to meet Messi face to face someday.

“Being the best player in footballing history, he definitely has more work than he can handle. I could be his representative when he is too busy,” he said.
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From: MeNeedIt

A privacy group sued the New York Police Department on Tuesday to demand the release of documents related to its use of facial-recognition technology, which rights groups have criticized as discriminatory and lacking in proper oversight.

The lawsuit is the latest attempt to compel U.S. law enforcement agencies to disclose more about how they rely on searchable facial-recognition databases in criminal investigations.

NYPD has previously produced one document in response to a January 2016 freedom of information request, despite evidence it has frequently used an advanced face-recognition system for more than five years, according to the Center for Privacy & Technology at Georgetown University law school, which filed the suit in New York state court.

“The department’s claim that it cannot find any records about its use of the technology is deeply troubling,” said David Vladeck, the privacy group’s faculty director. He added that an absence of responsive documents, such as contract and purchasing documents, training materials or audits, would be an indication the police force did not possess controls governing its use of facial-recognition software.

NYPD could not be immediately reached for comment on the suit.

Facial-recognition databases are used by police to help identify possible criminal suspects. They typically work by conducting searches of vast troves of known images, such as mug shots, and algorithmically comparing them with other images, such as those taken form a store’s surveillance cameras, that capture an unidentified person believed to be committing a crime.

But the technology has come under increased scrutiny in recent years amid fears that it may lack accuracy, lead to false positives and perpetuate racial bias.

Democratic and Republican lawmakers expressed consternation at the secrecy surrounding facial-recognition technology during a U.S. House Oversight Committee hearing in March.

The Center for Privacy & Technology released a report last year concluding half of America’s adults have their images stored in at least one searchable facial-recognition database used by local, state and federal authorities.

The study, titled “Perpetual Line-Up,” found that states rely on mug shots, driver’s license photos, or both in assembling their databases, and that images are often shared with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office estimated last year that more than 400 million facial pictures of Americans were stored in databases kept by law enforcement agencies.
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From: MeNeedIt

President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the U.S. ambassador to China said on Tuesday he would do everything possible to address what he called China’s “unfair and illegal” sales of underpriced steel in the world market.

“I want to do everything I can to make sure that we stop the unfair and illegal activities that we’ve seen from China in the steel industry,” the nominee, Iowa’s Republican Gov. Terry Branstad, said at his U.S. Senate confirmation hearing.
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From: MeNeedIt

A thunderous drumbeat echoed through the cocktail reception at the Met Gala. Either an earthquake was hitting the Upper East Side of Manhattan, or the glittering assembly of guests was being called in to dinner.

Hasan Minhaj, a correspondent on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” was standing with the show’s host, Trevor Noah, and marveling about the week he was having. Just two days earlier, he’d made a huge splash with his blistering speech at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and now he was at one of the most exclusive parties on the planet, rubbing shoulders (literally) with a ridiculous number of A-list celebrities, and getting praise for his performance.

“It’s been an insane week,” he said. “I keep thinking, what if the other night had gone poorly, what would tonight have been like?”

Like everyone, he was somewhat shell-shocked at the number of famous people present. He mentioned Matt Damon and Michael B. Jordan in particular, just two of hundreds of celebrities attending what often feels like a combination of the Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and Tonys, plus the worlds of fashion and sports.

The stars were packed so tightly together, in fact, that the major hazard of the evening seemed to be potential hem damage, from famous feet stepping inadvertently on long, delicate trains. Halle Berry, wearing a black-and-gold Atelier Versace jumpsuit, was one of those who had to stop and release her train from a stranger’s foot as she glided across the Carroll and Milton Petrie European Sculpture Court during cocktail hour.

The evening began with invited guests making their way past the assembled media and up the red-carpeted stairs, then into the huge entry hall of the museum, where a massive tower of hot pink and white roses, in the form of a flower, awaited them. Nobody seemed to know how many roses had been called into service. That tower and the rest of the evening’s decor was inspired, of course, by revered designer Rei Kawakubo, founder of Comme des Garcons and the subject of the Costume Institute’s spring exhibit.

After climbing up the huge interior staircase, and past a receiving line, many opted to head before cocktails to the exhibit, set in a pure white setting with geometric structures housing some of the designer’s most famous collections.

One of those displays had actor Ansel Elgort staring at the strange body forms dreamed up by Kawakubo for her 1997 collection “Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body,” in which garments are stretched over bizarre protrusions coming from the stomach, the back, the waist or the hip.

“It’s sort of a comment on what people are doing to their bodies these days. I think that may be what she’s doing here,” Elgort suggested.

Some of the guests were wearing Kawakubo’s designs, known for their boundary-pushing, avant-garde nature, but not for their wearability. One of them, Michele Lamy, wife of designer Rick Owens, was wearing a red-and-pink Comme des Garcons dress that looked like a pile of unfinished strips of fabrics, somehow hanging loosely together.

“Yes, she’s a visionary, she is hugely influential, but she also makes it fun,” Lamy said.

Isabelle Huppert, the French film star, was wearing a Dior leather beret as she examined the exhibit. “It’s amazing, really like an art installation, not a fashion exhibit,” she said.

Lucas Hedges, the young actor nominated for an Oscar this year for “Manchester by the Sea,” suggested that the exhibit felt “like a guided meditation on fashion, life and beauty.”

Broadway actress Laura Osnes was experiencing her first Met gala. Wintour, she said, had come to see her new show, “Bandstand,” the week before, and suddenly invited her. There followed a mad rush to find something worthy to wear. Osnes ended up with a dramatically voluminous – in other words, huge – pink skirt with rose appliques and a long train by Christian Siriano. It was one of the more striking outfits of the evening.

“I figured, who knows if I’ll be here ever again,” Osnes said.

She soon found other Broadway stars to compare notes with: Josh Groban was there, as was Tony-winner Cynthia Erivo, and Andy Karl, who stars in “Groundhog Day” and famously tore his anterior cruciate ligament just before the show opened. Karl seemed in good shape, saying he was progressing well in physical therapy.

Speaking of being in shape, two of the best tennis players in history were in the room. The pregnant Serena Williams was in bright green Versace – and yes, she was glowing. As for ever-dapper Roger Federer, he lived up to his reputation with a Gucci tux that held a huge, jeweled surprise on the back.

“Is that a dragon?” he was asked.

“No! It’s a king cobra,” he replied. Then he posed for a few more pictures, and headed into dinner.
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From: MeNeedIt

African military expenditures have finally slowed down after more than a decade of steady increases, according to a new report on global defense spending. The main reason, the report found, is a drop in oil prices.

“The sharp decreases in oil prices has affected quite a number of African countries, namely South Sudan and Angola.  This has kind of driven almost the entire regional trend,” said Nan Tian, a researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s (SIPRI) Arms and Military Expenditure Program, the organization that authored the report.

The SIPRI report found military spending in Africa in 2016 was down by 1.3 percent from the previous year and totaled about $37.9 billion.

Despite the drop, Africa’s military spending remains 48 percent higher than it was a decade ago.  “A few of the top spenders within these regions are generally oil economies, so the low oil prices have meant sharp cutbacks in government financing and that includes military spending,” he said.

Some of Africa’s biggest spenders in recent years have included oil-rich Angola, which has sought to modernize its air force and navy, and Algeria which has tried to preserve its stability amid the collapse of Libya and the rise of extremism in North Africa.  Both of those countries have slowed spending recently, Tian said.

Weighing spending against needs

Tian said that perhaps the most important question to ask, is whether military spending in Africa is at appropriate levels.

Ten African countries have military expenditures greater than 3 percent of their GDP. The highest are the Republic of the Congo where military expenditures totaled 7 percent of GDP in 2016, and Algeria where military spending totaled 6.7 percent of GDP.

Globally, military spending is 2.2 percent of GDP or about $227 per person.

“You have the security aspect also in Africa.  We have the opportunity costs,” Tian said.  “It is the poorest continent.  The question is: should this continent be spending?  Are they spending enough or are they spending too much on military based on their current income levels?  Should they rather be prioritizing other aspects of spending maybe health care, maybe education, maybe infrastructure?”

Not all African countries saw a decline in military spending.  According to the report, Botswana’s military spending grew by 40 percent, or about $152 million.  Botswana is regularly noted for having a long record of peace and good governance, and is undergoing a military modernization program.

Nigeria increased its military spending by 1.2 percent to $1.7 billion as it strives to defeat the radical Islamist group Boko Haram.  Similarly, Kenya and Mali increased military spending due to extremist threats in their regions.
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From: MeNeedIt

Bette Midler, Cate Blanchett and Sally Field received best actress nominations in Broadway’s Tony Awards on Tuesday, while “Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812” scored a leading 12 nominations including the top prize, best musical.

Close behind was the hit revival of “Hello, Dolly!” which took 10 nominations, including one for actor David Hyde Pierce.

“Dear Evan Hansen,” “Groundhog Day The Musical” and “Come From Away” received best musical nominations as well.

Best play nominees included “Oslo,” “Sweat,” “Indecent,” and “A Doll’s House, Part 2,” which won nominations for stars Laurie Metcalf and Chris Cooper.

The Tony Awards will be presented on June 11 at Manhattan’s Radio City Music Hall in a ceremony headlined by film and stage star Kevin Spacey.
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From: MeNeedIt

The Trump administration is turning back a U.S. public school program promoted by former first lady Michelle Obama that required healthier lunches for children.

“If kids aren’t eating the food and it’s ending up in the trash, they aren’t getting any nutrition … undermining the intent of the program,” Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said Monday.

He made his announcement at an elementary school cafeteria in Leesburg, Virginia, near Washington, before a tray of chicken nuggets, fruit and salad.

Perdue said he appreciates what Michelle Obama wanted to do — giving children lunches with more whole grains and less fat and salt. But he said his department wants to adjust the program to make the healthier food more appetizing.

Chocolate milk back on menu

For starters, schools can now serve chocolate or strawberry flavored milk with 1 percent fat instead of nonfat milk.

Under the 2012 Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, schools that wanted federal meal subsidies would have to put limits on salt and fat in lunches and add more fruit, vegetables and whole grains to the menus.

Health experts say U.S. children do not exercise enough and that one in six are overweight.
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From: MeNeedIt

If you’re someone who likes a lot of guidance and explanation at the museum, you might want to dramatically recalibrate your expectations before heading into “Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons: Art of the In-Between,” the lavishly presented new show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.

Arriving in a brilliant white space containing a series of geometric structures, you’ll find no one pointing you in the right direction, and no explanatory text next to the garments. That’s because for Kawakubo, the revered Japanese designer who’s been reinventing her clothes for nearly a half-century — to the point that she no longer calls them clothes, but “objects for the body” — there is no right answer. 

“I don’t like to explain the clothes,” the Comme des Garcons founder, now 74, was quoted as saying in 2013. “The clothes are just as you see them and feel them.”

There is a bit of guidance available. Andrew Bolton, star curator of this and other blockbuster Met fashion exhibits, has provided paper brochures with maps and context, though he cheerfully welcomes you to ditch them. And even this much explanation for the visitor was a hard-fought compromise with Kawakubo.

“It was a battle,” Kawakubo says in an interview with Bolton. “Are you going to write that we fought?”

They seem to have fought over various things. Showing a reporter around the exhibit a few days before opening, Bolton noted that although Kawakubo approached him 18 months ago saying she was ready for a show, she was resolutely opposed to a retrospective. She hates focusing on the past, because she has moved on.

“She finds it physically painful to look at her work. So, that took months of negotiation,” he said.

Fans of “Comme,” as fashion-lovers call it, would have been “screaming in my ears,” Bolton added, if he hadn’t included collections like “Broken Bride,” where Kawakubo explored the concept of marriage, and “Ballerina Motorbike,” in which she juxtaposed the very feminine — a filmy pink tutu — with the tough, muscular look of a black motorcycle jacket.

Her ‘ruptures’

Kawakubo wanted to focus exclusively on the last few years of designs — following her second “rupture” in 2014, when she said she was no longer making “clothing” in the sense of wearable garments.  (Her first rupture, in 1979, is known as the moment she decided to ditch her early, folklore-inflected designs and “start from zero.”)  “This was where her mind was at,” Bolton said. He convinced her otherwise, and sprinkled through the show are juxtapositions of the older, more functional clothes, and the new.

Pointing out a 2009 dress, he noted: “This still has arms, still has legs, still has openings.” Then, pointing to a post-2014 version: “Now you see the priority of form over function.” An example of her later work is three jackets, fused into one — with two of the jackets forming sleeves of the central jacket.

It is rare that the Costume Institute focuses on a single living designer — the last was Yves Saint Laurent in 1983. But Bolton had long wanted to work with Kawakubo. “For me Rei is not only the most important and influential designer of the last 40 years, but the most inspirational at the same time,” he says. “Her influence is enormous — especially on the vocabulary of fashion that we now take for granted, like asymmetry, like the unfinished, like black as a fashionable color.”

“She summarizes the last 50 years of fashion. She’s that important.”

‘Least dissatisfying’ collection

The exhibit, which began with the glitzy Met gala Monday night and opens to the public May 4, is divided into nine themes, all of them dualities in Kawakubo’s work: Fashion/Anti-Fashion, High/Low, Design/Not Design, and Clothes/Not Clothes are a few.

Passing by one display, Bolton notes that the collection is one of Kawakubo’s favorites — and then stops himself. “Well, she wouldn’t say favorite — she would say `least dissatisfying.”‘ That 1997 collection was called “Body Meets Dress — Dress Meets Body.” Garments in gingham-like fabric are stretched over bizarre protrusions on the body, coming out from the stomach or the back or the hip.

“I didn’t expect them to be easy garments to be worn every day,” Kawakubo has said about that collection. “It is more important … to translate thoughts into action rather than to worry about if one’s clothes are worn in the end.” (Of course, she has made more commercial collections that end up in stores, if not the runway.)

Scurrying around the exhibit the other day, Bolton described a classic anxiety dream he’d had two nights earlier: The exhibit opened, but it was in a huge airplane hangar — and nobody came. No one at all.

And Kawakubo, too, has not been immune to anxiety about the show. “Do you think the space is disorienting?” she asks him during the interview. “Do you think people will get lost?”

Getting lost, he assures her, is rather the point.
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From: MeNeedIt

The microbes in your gut may have a say in what you want for dinner, according to new research.

The findings only apply to fruit flies at the moment. But they add to the evidence that microbes influence the behavior of the creatures they inhabit, from flies to people.

Fruit flies are a good place to begin to study how microbes affect complex behaviors like food choices, according to neuroscientist Carlos Ribeiro at the Champalimaud Foundation, because while the human gut contains hundreds of different kinds of microbes, flies have just five.

Craving killer

In the new study in the journal PLOS Biology, Ribeiro and his colleagues raised flies in a sterile environment and fed them a carefully controlled diet. When the flies were deprived of protein, they sought out yeast.

“Yeast is the steak of the flies,” Ribeiro said.

But when these sterile, protein-starved flies were inoculated with two of the five species of normal gut bacteria, they no longer sought out yeast.

“We’re not talking about a slight reduction,” Ribeiro added. “It’s really that the flies do not show an increase in protein appetite when they have these two bacteria.”

In effect, the microbes were telling the flies what to eat.

Also, while protein-hungry flies normally produce a lot fewer eggs, flies carrying these two bacteria did not see as big a drop in fertility.

Ribeiro doesn’t know why the bacteria would have these effects. But he noted that flies don’t live as long when they eat more protein-rich food.

“It might be advantageous not to overeat,” he said. “Maybe what the bacteria do to the fly is, it allows it to maximize reproduction while minimizing the shortening of its lifespan.”

Microbes were there first

“This is a pretty cool paper, I have to say,” said University College Cork neuroscientist John Cryan, who was not involved with the research. Cryan has studied how gut microbes affect anxiety and behavior in mice.

“What I’ve come to realize over the years is that there are very few elements of neurodevelopment and the brain that are not in some ways regulated by microbes,” he said. “We have to remember that the microbes were there first, before all species. We’ve all developed, including flies, in a microbial milieu, sending signals from the gut to the brain.”

While the fly study makes it tempting to blame our meat cravings on our microbiomes, “We have no idea whether any of this could be upscaled to a mammal,” Cryan said.

Ribeiro also has no idea how the bacteria are exerting their influence. His group plans to study metabolites the bacteria produce, and how the flies’ brain activity changes in the presence of the bacteria.
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From: MeNeedIt

Oystermen, pirates and police clashed violently more than a century ago over who could collect the Chesapeake Bay’s tasty and lucrative oysters. As the shellfish makes a comeback, a modern-day oyster war is brewing, this time between wealthy waterfront property owners and working-class fishermen.

Over the past five years, oyster production has doubled on the East Coast, driven by new farming methods, cleaner water and Americans’ growing taste for orders on the half shell. The resurgence has led to unprecedented resistance from coastal Virginians who want to maintain picturesque views from their waterfront homes and has fueled a debate over access to public waterways.

“These people can’t have it all,” said Chris Ludford, an oysterman in Virginia Beach who sells to nearby farm-to-table restaurants.  

Ludford said he faces fierce pushback along a Chesapeake Bay tributary from people with “a $2,000 painting in their house of some old bearded oysterman tonging oysters.

“But they don’t want to look out their window and see the real thing,” he said.

Views spoiled, privacy lost

 Homeowners say the growing number of oystermen — dressed in waders and often tending cages of shellfish — spoil their views and invade their privacy. Residents also worry about less access to the water and the safety of boaters and swimmers.

Low tides often expose oyster cages, usually accompanied by markers or warning signs that protrude from the surface. In some places, cages float.

“All of sudden you have people working in your backyard like it was some industrial area,” said John Korte, a retired NASA aerospace engineer in Virginia Beach who’s among residents concerned about oyster farming’s proliferation. “They may be a hundred feet away from someone’s yard.”

Ben Stagg, chief engineer at the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, said the state is poised to break its record of leased acreage for oyster growing. But nearly 30 percent of more than 400 new lease applications face opposition, an unprecedented number that’s led to a backlog of leases awaiting approval.

 “Occasionally I can resolve those by having the parties get together and adjust the area further offshore,” Stagg said. “But oftentimes, I can’t.”

Oysters make a comeback

There hasn’t been this much interest in oysters in Virginia since the early 1960s. Since then, disease and overfishing took hold and growers started to disappear.

Over the last few decades, breeding programs have produced more disease-resistant and faster-growing oysters. The water’s cleaner. American palettes have evolved, increasing demand.  

Farming techniques also changed. Traditionally, oysters are grown on the bottom of a calm and salty river or bay, then harvested with tongs or dredges that pull them onto boats.  

Now, fishermen are increasingly using cages to grow oysters over a two-to-three year period. The equipment keeps predators away and produces oysters with a more uniform shape and size, which restaurants prefer.

 But the cages are often placed in shallower water closer to shore — and people’s homes.  

Virginia Beach is perhaps ground zero for today’s oyster war. The state’s largest city sits at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. And oysters thrive in the city’s Lynnhaven River, a network of bays and creeks flowing past expensive homes. Lynnhaven oysters are well-known for their salty taste and size.

Solution is not easy to find

A state task force was formed to find compromise. It recommended giving residents more power to block nearby oyster leases. But the idea was rejected by the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, with the majority of commissioners saying state lawmakers should step in.  

Proposals in the Statehouse have included raising the cost of an oyster farming lease from $1.50 an acre annually to $5,000. But legislators haven’t found a solution.  

Conflicts also have flared up along Maryland’s Patuxent River, the coastal lagoons of Rhode Island and on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.  

In Delaware, a group of people who mostly own vacation homes successfully blocked potential oyster farming along their part of an inland bay.

“Oftentimes, affluent and new members of the community have the point of view that they own the water in front of them, which is really not true,” said Bob Rheault, executive director of the East Coast Shellfish Growers Association. “We need to win back our social license to farm.”

Rheault said he’s seen these battles “up and down the East Coast” — even before the crop began to double five years ago.

 “The industry was there before the waterfront mansions were built,” Rheault added. “But it hasn’t been there for this generation.”

Ludford, who also works as a Virginia Beach firefighter, is relatively new to the business. He and other relatives started growing oysters in 2010 after leaving the crab industry.

Is zoning the answer?

On a recent morning, Ludford sorted through cages as he stood in the Lynnhaven River, hundreds of yards from the nearest home.  

He dragged cages into view as grass shrimp wriggled on the shells. He and two helpers retrieved more than 500 oysters, which he sold at 75 cents apiece to three restaurants — totaling about $375.

“Really, people haven’t seen an oysterman behind their houses in 50 to 60 years,” Ludford said.

Steven Corneliussen, who owns a waterfront home in Poquoson, Virginia, said he’s among a group that successfully protested new leases along his corner of the Chesapeake. He said waterways should be subject to zoning, like land.     

“That water out in front of me doesn’t belong to me,” he said. “But it doesn’t belong to them, either.” 
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From: MeNeedIt