Hama Hama® Oyster Blog

The other day a customer in the retail store informed us that we needed to restock our display tanks because all the oysters in it were dead. But the oysters weren’t dead, they were just eating. All the oysters had opened slightly (as in the photo above) in order to filter plankton out of the water.

Oysters are passive feeders… they rely on water currents to bring them their dinner. This is one reason why the growing location of an oyster can influence its taste, appearance, and texture: oysters grown on high-current beaches have more food to eat than oysters grown in still waters. (They’re also more likely to be blown off the beach during a storm, but that’s a story for another day).

All this talk about oysters eating brings to mind Lewis Carroll’s “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1872).

“O Oysters, come and walk with us!”
The Walrus did beseech.
“A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
Along the briny beach:
We cannot do with more than four,
To give a hand to each.”

The eldest Oyster looked at him,
But never a word he said:
The eldest Oyster winked his eye,
And shook his heavy head–
Meaning to say he did not choose
To leave the oyster-bed.

(more…)

Check out these colorful oyster shacks of Ile d’Oléron, France, courtesy of Walt.

Meanwhile, last summer residents of Wellfleet, MA decided to preserve Cape Cod’s last historic oyster shack “as tribute to oystering.” Unfortunately the news article didn’t provide a picture of the shack in question.

Oysters are stocking up on good karma. Recently Louisiana researchers discovered that a fatty substance found in oysters may cure cancer. (Eat up, folks!)

The sneaky bivalves have also been transmitting messages from on high… or at least answering the financial prayers of a North Carolina man who found this shell, saw the Virgin Mary, and auctioned it off for $135.00 on Ebay.

The oyster is taking over the world! Read below to learn more about the brash bivalve’s cultural conquests (and our attempts to explain them).

1. Oyster Magazine (Australia).

Oysters have a reputation for being sexy and they definitely have cutting-edge qualities. They’ve also moved beyond gender: they start out male but switch sexes several times during their lives. But as for their hip fashion sense???? Although occasionally an oyster will doll itself up with accessories such as drill snail egg carcasses and seaweed, the jury’s still out on whether this qualifies as high-fashion.

2. Oyster Card (London)

This one was a little harder to figure out: why name a card designed to help people move faster through a public transportation system after an animal that is completely immobile??? It made more sense when we learned that London’s oyster card system occasionally fails, stranding people like you-know-whats on a beach, and that some Dutch people even managed to shuck the card’s security system.

3. Oyster music groups, most notably Blue Oyster Cult, more obscurely Secret Oyster, Oysterhead, and Oyster Band.

We agree, oysters rock.

4. Nonprofit Oyster (United States). These folks are doing good work, but we generally try to avoid this kind of oyster.

(more…)

Strange happenings in the world of oyster aquaculture:

1. Today’s LA Times ran an article about the West Coast’s V. tubiashii outbreak that is worth reading. Among other interesting things we learned from the article: the fact that the bacteria can be wind-dispersed, “launched into the air by bubbles bursting at the ocean’s surface.”

2. Turmoil in the French oyster industry. Something (a virus? warm water temperatures?) is killing juvenile oysters in France, which is the fourth-largest oyster producer in the world, behind China, Japan, and South Korea. Some farmers have lost between 40 to 100 percent of their oysters aged 1 to 2 years.

Bruce from West Seattle shared with us this image of John Singer Sargent’s masterpiece, the Oyster Gatherers of Cancale. Stop by Singer Sargent’s website for a history of both the painting and Cancale’s oyster industry.

Thanks Bruce!

Last weekend 22-year old Patrick “Deep Dish” Bertoletti, a professional eater from Chicago, consumed 35 dozen oysters in 8 minutes to win the Acme World Oyster Eating Championship in New Orleans.

Has anyone ever seen a Louisiana oyster? They’re gray, runny, and grown at the mouth of the Mississippi, spelled p-o-l-l-u-t-e-d.

Read the AP article here for a glimpse into the weird world of competitive eating, and check out the Chicagoist for an up-close picture of Deep Dish.

There are two types of oyster eater: those who are born loving oysters, and those who grow into the taste. For one local dog, the oyster epiphany came last Saturday at an informal campfire gathering in Lilliwaup. Since puppyhood Area Dog has lived on Hood Canal, but this was the first time he’d expressed interest in oysters.

(Caveat: only in Lilliwaup, where the hens lay soft-boiled eggs and the lemonade springs, would it be o.k. to feed world-class shellfish to a dog.)

Area Dog signals interest in oyster…

gets ignored…

and then finds the stash.

Would somebody please just shuck this dog an oyster before he hurts himself?

Pacific oysters can grow really, really big if left to their own devices. We keep this monster oyster shell in our store to show to interested customers. It also goes on tour with us occasionally…down to Portland to decorate our booth at the NW Food and Wine Festival…over to Seattle for one of the numerous oyster events we participate in.

Barnacles close-up

Oyster tree-rings

In a later post we’ll talk about oyster predators… one of which makes oysters develop the pock-marked pattern shown above.

Piggy-back oyster.

T.J. and Jean Hsu, visiting from Texas, stopped by to take a tour of the farm, pick up a dozen oysters, and pose with the giant Pacific.