Short NoteUsing business names as an indicator of oysters' cultural value

- Ecosystem-based management, a goal of fisheries management in the US, has large data needs across a variety of concepts.
- Cultural value indicators are sparsely available, especially for regional-scale research and management.
- Businesses named after oysters provide an easy-access, spatial, and quantitative indicator option for cultural value associated with oysters to aid in Chesapeake fisheries management.

Business names, as recorded by state tax departments, offer a possible indicator of cultural ecosystem services provided by nearby natural resources. Using oysters in the Chesapeake Bay as an example, we process spatial and quantitative analyses that can potentially identify cultural value for integration into monitoring efforts that aim to incorporate a variety of ecosystem services. Businesses named directly after oysters provide a useful lens to capture the many reasons people value oysters culturally, but also provide an easy aggregate indicator that could potentially be added to regular regional monitoring programs in order to factor in cultural value to adaptive management policies.