But after years of Virginia’s careful management of harvests to allow for spawning, he and state officials are more hopeful this season and expect the largest commercial harvest of the shellfish in 30 years.

“We had fallen to a harvest low, and then it plateaued, and now we’re at a major increase in oyster production,” Kellum said. “It’s exciting. I didn’t think I’d see this in my career.”

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Virginia estimates that commercial oyster businesses will harvest 300,000 bushels this season in public fishery areas. Maryland expects to harvest 600,000 bushels, marking the fourth consecutive year the state has seen harvest increases. Because Maryland has more public fishery areas, its harvests tend to be larger than Virginia, officials said.

Commercially harvesting oysters is a tough, multimillion dollar business in the D.C. region. The season runs roughly from the early fall to late spring in each state. Final harvest numbers will come in by early summer.

Oysters are an important part of the Chesapeake Bay’s ecology because they filter sediment and nitrogen out of the water. They also provide a habitat that attracts crabs and fish. But they’re temperamental, and ensuring they have a good environment to grow is no easy task. They’re typically found in brackish waters, ranging from 2- to 15-feet deep.

For oysters, reproduction and survival are challenging. While they produce a lot of larvae, most don’t make it. One oyster can produce up to 20 million larvae in a season. Larvae are microscopic and have to attach to a hard surface like a shell to grow.

And they’re vulnerable to Mother Nature.

Oysters need water temperatures that are just right — not too cold and not too hot — to spawn and grow. If there’s a drought, the water becomes too salty, which can kill them. Plus, they need the right amount of oxygen in the water to survive. Even with ideal conditions, it takes an oyster about three years to get to market size, which is about 3-inches long.

“There’s a sweet spot for oysters,” said Jamie Green, a commissioner for the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, which regulates shellfish. “You don’t want a really dry year, because that causes high salinity and then that makes them more likely to be hit with disease. And a catastrophic storm can also change salinity too much as well.”

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For decades, oyster populations in Virginia have been hard hit. Experts said spikes in salinity triggered disease in the late 1980s, causing low yields that continued through the 1990s until the early 2000s, when they started to pick up. Every year since the late 1920s, experts adjusted harvest areas, leaving areas with lower populations alone so they could grow more oysters or shortening the allowed harvest times, to improve spawning throughout the bay.

“Now we’re expecting our best year in a long time,” Green said. “We don’t want the most oysters. We want the most sustainable oysters.”

In Maryland, oyster harvests have steadily increased for the past few years.

Chris Judy, shellfish division director for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, said the state has had good levels of oyster reproduction, which means a larger population and harvest, especially in the mid- to lower parts of the bay that stretches from the Choptank River to the Maryland-Virginia border.

Still, Maryland has had its challenges. Maryland’s portion of the bay is more sensitive than Virginia’s to intense runoff from storms because it sits closer to the freshwater Susquehanna River. Too much fresh water causes the water’s salinity to “oscillate up and down more than what you’ll see in Virginia,” Judy said, and that can lead to poor oyster reproduction.

Beginning in 1999, Maryland suffered a four-year drought that caused a spike in salinity, and enormous numbers of oysters died from disease, Judy said. Since then, Maryland has not seen a major disease outbreak.

Even with a larger oyster harvest expected this season in Maryland and Virginia, experts say it won’t translate into lower prices for consumers because there’s a large demand for high-quality oysters.

“They’re a good economic value to the state but an even better environmental value,” Green said. “Because they show that our water quality is getting better as the ecosystem they live in is growing and thriving.”

For Kellum, the forecast of bountiful oyster harvests is welcome. As some areas are open for harvest longer and others closed, he’s able to plan and adjust his crews and boats accordingly, saving time and money. Plus, a better harvest year — and hopefully more to come — gives him hope about passing on the family business to his children and nephews.

Back in the late 1990s, he didn’t think he’d be able to pass on the business that his grandfather started as a one-room shucking house in 1948. In Weems, where he’s based — about 75 miles east from Richmond — there were 18 commercial oyster producers in the 1980s. Now his business is one of the few left and employs about 110 people.

“I can now see a future for the younger generations of my family to continue on and produce a resource that folks can enjoy around the country,” Kellum said. “It’s awesome and it’s humbling.”