Hama Hama® Oyster Blog

Oysters are hardcore about sticking together. When clusters come in off the beach we try to break them apart into singles, but it’s generally impossible to do so without damaging the oysters. Now scientists at Purdue University have figured out exactly why that is: the oysters are cemented together.

Oyster shell typically contains 1 to 2 % protein, and oyster adhesive (or what they use to attach themselves to each other) contains 5 times that amount. But as explained in this NY Times article :

oysters seem to use far less protein in their adhesive than other marine animals do. Mussels and barnacles produce a softer glue with more protein, while oysters produce a harder cementlike material.

For centuries people have used oyster shell to make concrete, so it’s fitting that shells contain a cementlike substance. (Concrete = cement plus an aggregate like sand or gravel). Oyster shell concrete, called tabby, is made of oyster shell, lime (which you can extract from burned oyster shell) and sand. Depending on whom you ask, tabby was either developed in Morroco, then spread to Spain during the Moor conquest, and then introduced to the Americas with the conquistadors… or it was used in the New World before Europeans arrived (although none of these structures have ever been found)… or it was developed by the British. Either way, the U.S. Atlantic coast is the world’s epicenter of oyster shell tabby construction. Early colonists used oyster shell mined from Native American middens to build forts, chimneys, and even vats to dye indigo.

Someday, hopefully sooner rather than later, we’re going to construct something out of tabby. Maybe a fence. Maybe a wall. Maybe a tower. Maybe an outdoor chimney. Maybe just a giant tchotchke. Stay tuned.

Read how to make tabby.

Read more about tabby’s history on the east coast.

For the past several years oyster farmers in France have seen their oyster beds decimated by a new, more virulent strain of oyster herpes. The virus stays dormant until water temperatures get above 61 degrees Fahrenheit and then attacks oysters just as they are weakened by the effort of reproducing, killing as much as 80% of the population.

Now the virus has popped up in the UK. According to this National Geographic article, the disease may have spread on oyster harvesting equipment.

A less virulent strain of oyster herpes has been detected in California… but let’s hope this European monster bug doesn’t cross the pond.

Here’s a neat photo of oysters spawning:

There was a depressing story in today’s Seattle Times about ocean acidification and the future of Hood Canal’s oyster industry.  Dr. Richard Feely put it all in perspective:

The pH levels we saw there [Hood Canal] were far lower than anything we’ve seen in the open ocean.

And low pH levels are very bad for oyster larvae.

And we don’t know what else to say about it.

Graduate school, perhaps?

We haven’t ever seen these dandies in action, but we’re guessing they’re a big fat waste of money.

Hi-Ya! The $140.99 Oyster Chucker opens clams and oysters in one stroke. But it looks like you have to insert the chucker between the top and bottom shells, and if you go through all that trouble, why not just shuck it by hand?

Or you get the deluxe model: At $263.52, the dangerous looking ProShucker “separates” 8 to 12 oysters per minute.

So, what’s a realistic mechanized shucking method? Some oyster companies have started pasteurizing oysters using very high pressure — a process that eliminates harmful bacteria and separates the oyster muscle from the shells, effectively shucking it. The oysters then need to be banded so that they stay closed. You can buy them in convenient shrink-wrapped plastic trays complete with a ketchup pouch sized container of lemon juice.

Below, Roberto demonstrates a very unmechanized method.

Oysters are legendary aphrodisiacs, and Casanova reportedly began each day with  a couple dozen raw ones.

Now, we would just write these statements off as old wives’ tales propagated by oyster farmers around Valentine’s Day, except that scientists have proven us wrong. It turns out that that raw oysters actually do stimulate the release of certain sexy hormones.

And of course, eating them with champagne doesn’t hurt much, either.

If you’re on the hunt for some oysters this Valentine’s Day, you can always buy some from us (!) or you can hit up one of the many champagne and oyster dinners happening around the country.  Here’s one in California (and not, as we first proposed, Miami) and a whole slew of them in New York City, which should not be confused with a whole slough of oysters, which isn’t very fancy at all:

If you haven’t already read Rowan Jacobsen’s newest book “The Living Shore,” we highly recommend that you do.

An article that appeared online a couple of weeks ago picks up an idea Rowan discusses in his book, which is that oysters played a pivotal role in human evolution.  Rowan put forth the “big brain” theory, or the idea that the Omega 3 fatty acids present in shellfish are what allowed humans to develop big brains. But according to the Boing Boing article, that’s not the only theory out there:

Marean thinks the big brain came first. You can’t just walk down to the beach and score yourself some sweet shellfish action (at least, not enough to sustain a society) without being pretty bright. Ancient humans would have had to be able to do some pretty complex thinking about concepts like time, Marean said. They would have to be able to make connections between unrelated things, like phases of the moon, tides and when shellfish were most plentiful. And they’d have to be able to communicate all that to other people.

From Marean’s perspective, big brains enabled a small group of humans to make the switch to a shellfish diet–an adaptation that allowed them to survive a climactic upheaval that wiped out most of their peers.

Hmm… which theory is correct? Either way, oysters are saviors of the human species, so, being oyster sellers, we think they’re both pretty groovy.  But as oyster pickers and farmers, and in the interest of self-aggrandizement, we’ll have to go with the “it takes a genius to pick an oyster” theory, not the “picking oysters is so easy even a caveman can do it” version. Sorry Rowan.

Tomorrow we head down to  Portland to shuck oysters at the Northwest Food and Wine Festival. Last year was really fun… the event had a happy, energetic vibe and we definitely discovered lots of delicious  local food and wine.

We’ll paying extra special attention to the wines we like this year, because just this week we received a license to sell wine in the seafood store. Let the wine education begin!

We’ve never noticed before how colorful Olympia oyster shells are. They’re full of earth tones: browns, deep purples, and mossy greens.

There are places on the farm where Olympias are abundant. They live on and amongst the larger Pacific oysters. These particular Olys had the misfortune to be attached to Pacific oysters that came up to shore to be shucked. We pried about 50 of them off the Pacifics, ate a couple, and put the rest out on the beach.

If you’re at all interested in learning more about the history of the Olympia oyster, we highly recommend Rowan Jacobsen’s newest book, The Living Shore. It’s a beautifully written, meditative book about humanity’s relationship with shellfish and the intertidal world. The book was released on September 1st and is available at Amazon for $14.70.

Yes, but they shouldn’t.

The AP reports that the Washington State Department of Health closed 400 acres of commercial shellfish beds on the Skokomish River (which drains the southern flanks of the Olympics) after they found human waste, left by recreational fishermen, in the bushes lining the riverbank. Apparently competition for fishing space was so fierce that fishermen were reluctant to abandon their posts to walk up the bank to the portable toilets.

Noctiluca, the dinoflagellate that caused a red algal bloom in the Canal last month, courtesy of Pete Becker.

Oyster larvae, courtesy of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center.