Crassostrea virginica, the eastern oyster.
While Virgin.
Disease, environmental pressures and overconsumption decimated the population by the end of the twentieth century.
But the bottomless appetite of the Gilded Age and great fleets of skipjacks took their toll.
When colonists first sailed these impossibly abundant shores, they described massive shoals of foot-long oysters.
These humble bivalves are the living bones of the Chesapeake and the ecological and historical lifeblood of the region.
Crassostrea virginica, the eastern oyster