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Florida oysters from the Apalachicola Bay on the gulf coast have seen a disastrous decline – leading to litigation among Florida, Georgia and Alabama over freshwater use. As Matt Galka tells us, a new federal plan aims to help water flow into the area…and restore livelihoods and oyster production in the state.

It wasn’t a good Oyster haul for Tony Saddler and his son in Apalachicola Bay Tuesday morning.

“Only got about a half a bag, out there about two hours,” he said.

But things are improving…slowly.  The bay used to provide nearly 90 percent of all the oysters in the state, but a recent drought nearly wiped out the industry. Restoration plans are starting to help businesses that almost went under.

Congresswoman Gwen Graham wants to kick start the effort.  She announced her bay restoration plan while looking for Oysters with fisherman Tuesday morning.

“This is a treasure to Florida, it’s a treasure to our country, and what I hope will happen is that we will get more and more people to come down to North Florida and see how special this place on the world is and want to be invested in helping protect it,” said U.S. Rep. Gwen Graham (D-2nd Congressional District).

The deterioration has caused Florida to sue the state of Georgia – alleging the peach state is hogging too much freshwater for the city of Atlanta and not letting it flow south.

So even though the problem is mainly in the panhandle a lack of oyster production could mean your seafood prices go up.

Restaurant owner Lynn Martina has had to downsize from wholesale seafood to running a raw bar because of the lack of production.

“I never dreamed we’d go from selling them by the tractor trailer load to selling them by the dozen but that’s where we are, and it’s just because of the decline,” said Martina.

The Apalachicola Bay was declared a fishery disaster in the summer of 2013 because of the dying industry.