The Glorious Oyster
Mike Todd, a board member of Tidewater Oyster Gardeners Association (TOGA), shows off his harvest.
Imagine strolling down to your dock to harvest oysters to serve to family or guests. Mike Todd doesn’t have to imagine because he’s one of many Northern Neck and Middle Peninsula residents who’ve taken up oyster gardening.
What began as a hobby six years ago when he discovered a neighbor growing oysters has become an avocation. His passion for the ecological and eating benefits of aquaculture has led him to become a board member of Tidewater Oyster Gardeners Association (TOGA), a nonprofit organization devoted to getting the word out on the environmental benefits of oyster cultivation to the Chesapeake Bay.
Of the more than 600 TOGA members spanning the commonwealth’s coast from Virginia Beach to Colonial Beach, Todd says, “We’re all amateur gardeners who want to grow our own oysters to eat as well as for the environmental benefits to the Bay. Oysters provide habitat for other aquatic life and an adult oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water a day. You’ll never have a healthy bay without oysters. So, both the ecology and food benefits attracted me to growing oysters. And it’s fun!”
For those interested in developing a “blue thumb,” the process begins with an evaluation of the site. The water must have sufficient salinity. It takes eight grams of salt per liter of water to grow oysters; a minimum water depth of one foot at low tide; adequate oxygen for survival and growth; enough algae; and an absence of sewage and other contaminants. Even with all the requirements met, the oyster’s flavor can still vary, based on the amount of salinity. The closer to the bay, the saltier the oyster.
Oyster gardeners can choose from a range of containment systems such as suspended mesh bags, floats, and fixed bottom cages or racks to allow good water flow. The type of device used depends partly on personal preference and partly on the site and how much wave action it has. “They really aren’t hard to grow,” Todd says from his Potomac River home, which has a clear view of the green shores of Maryland on the other side. “You do have to tend your cages to keep out predators like blue crabs, otters, and cow-nosed rays.” A permit from the Virginia Marine Resources Commission is required, but it’s free, simple to fill out, and generally takes about a month to get, according to Todd.
Next comes the exciting part: purchasing spat, or seed oysters, which can cost from $25 to $60, with the larger ones costing more. The trade-off for costlier, bigger spat is that predation from crabs will be less problematic and, for the eager eaters, the oysters will be large enough to harvest sooner. How soon? Todd says it takes between eighteen and twenty-four months to breed market-sized oysters, defined as being three inches long.
He pulled from his dock a half-dozen oysters that were easily that size. They had a delicately buttery taste, a reflection of the characteristics that vary depending on which particular area of water the oysters inhabit. Todd has ten grams of salt per liter of water in his stretch of the river, resulting in a beautifully balanced sweet-water oyster with a lightly creamy taste.
Ready to develop your own “blue thumb” and slurp back the fruits of your labor? Beginners can get a leg up by joining TOGA—dues are only $10 per year—or attending one of the thirty to thirty-five annual events held locally, such as the educational Northern Neck Oyster Fair held in the spring and the Urbanna Oyster Festival in November, which, this year, will be held November 6-7. The float-building workshop on September 13 provides materials to participants who pay for the cost and assemble the floats themselves. New last year was TOGA’s partnership with Stratford Hall’s Wine and Oyster Festival, which features seven regional growers plus education tents demonstrating shucking and cooking.
For those who seek to learn more, as Todd does, TOGA offers a Master Oyster Gardener certification program held over two weekends to teach more in-depth aspects of the biology and growing techniques of oyster cultivation. Once certified as Master Oyster Gardeners, participants are expected to give back fifty hours of service to the community. One way they do that is by visiting the oyster cultivation sites of those just getting started and sharing the wisdom of their own experience.
In the world of breeding oysters for commercial shucking and packing, a Master Oyster Gardener might be called an aquaculture manager and field scientist and that’s what A. J. Erskine does for Bevans Oyster Company in Kinsale and Cowart Seafood in Lottsburg. In 2005 Bevans Oyster Company and Cowart Seafood began developing an intensive aquaculture plan to hatch oysters on the Coan River—the first major tributary of the Potomac on the Virginia side—while they continued to do a lot of natural harvesting.
Centered around the nursery, the focus is not only the production of seed larvae but also on conditioning the oysters to become constant feeders so they’ll grow faster since, normally, oysters only feed when the tide is coming in or going out. To accomplish faster growth, a floating upweller system is used. This creates an artificial tide by means of a paddlewheel that moves nutrient-rich water through the system at a constant rate, year-round. Voila! The little guys are eating all the time.
After six months of constant feeding in the floating upweller system, the young oysters are ready for even faster growth at their next stage of development, when they’re suspended in mid-water cages. This makes it possible to produce market-ready oysters at a much faster rate than possible through conventional growth methods. “We’ve got 3,000 cages in the river,” Erskine says. “That’s intensive aquaculture. We get nice, fat oyster meat in the summer and that’s very attractive to our customers.”
For proof of the success of the trajectory of intensive aquaculture, Erskine points to the VIMS Virginia Shellfish Aquaculture Situation and Outlook report for 2013, which stated that the number of aquacultured market oysters sold in 2013 was 31 million, a sharp contrast to 2005’s figure of less than one million. “The oyster gardeners have a feel-good ecological perspective, but we’re filtering a lot more water with this operation, even though, compared to the volume of the Coan River or compared to the volume of the Chesapeake Bay, it’s a small percentage. We’re taking as much as we can out of the water to make the water clear.”
Talk to many oyster gardeners and they’re likely to demonstrate the same sense of pride about filtering water and helping the ecosystem of the bay as Erskine does. Many will be happy to give you an estimate of how many thousands or millions of gallons of river water their oysters have filtered over the years. And not all breeders choose to eat their harvest. Some people donate their oysters to reefs while others release them to public waters to ensure the future of the natural population.
The Chesapeake Bay oyster was once a major player in maintaining the health of the bay until overharvesting, habitat destruction, and disease caused their numbers to dwindle dramatically. “There was a whole generation who didn’t have access to plentiful oysters,” Todd says. “That’s why we’re trying to get younger people involved with TOGA and oyster gardening. I’ve made so many friends and acquaintances from TOGA and met helpful, great people. Hopefully, now, I can share with others what I have learned. I’d like to see anyone who lives on the water or has access to it grow oysters.”
How Does Your Oyster Garden Grow?
Tidewater Oyster Gardeners Association: oystergardener.org
Chesapeake Bay Foundation: cbf.org/virginiaoysters
TOGA’s list of spat suppliers: oystergardener.org/#!spat-center/c845
Permits: mrc.state.va.us/Shellfish_Aquaculture.shtm
Virginia Institute of Marine Science: vims.edu/research/units/centerspartners/map/
Virginia Aquaculture Association: virginiaaquaculture.org
This article appeared in the Fall 2014 issue of The Local Scoop Magazine, pgs. 49-51.
