Oyster Blog — Oyster World

First oysterpedia, now oyster guru. There's another oyster iPhone app on the market, this one (according to the LA Times) from Greg Cohen, an oyster guru. It describes Hama Hamas as being high salinity, which is normally incorrect (Hood Canal being much less salty than the ocean), but we're quite impressed that the guru knows extra small Hama Hamas are not available from July thru September. Meanwhile, the oysterpedia description of Hama Hama oysters is so funny it made us laugh out loud.... "Hama Hama oysters have been harvested by the Hama Hama Company out of the Hama Hama River since...

Apparently Hama Hama's made quite a splash at a food conference in Texas: Texas food writer Robb Walsh has tried to rile up Gulf oystermen with [the success stories of west coast oystermen]."Just for fun, we did something kind of goofy," Walsh says, recalling when he presented puny Hama Hama and Hog Island oysters to a roomful of astounded Gulf oyster producers. "We said these oysters are selling for four times as much as Gulf oysters, so they must be four times better than yours." We think this is interesting on many levels. One: our oysters actually are four times...

Here are some photos from our barge ride last week with Urban Farmer.  The weather was perfect for a short little jaunt out on the Canal... we took some time to liberate a bucket of sea creatures that had been stranded on the shucking table, met Lefty, the injured seagull who always hitches a ride on the barge to eat similarly stranded sea creatures, and watched as Adam pulled in a few tubs. And then, later in the week, we saw a really pretty moonrise. N.B. safety mongers: while we did provide life jackets to everyone on the boat, nobody took us up...

Japanese artist Iori Tomita's collection "New World Transparent Specimens," featuring preserved, dyed, and artfully displayed sea creatures, via coolhunting.com.

Oyster herpes first gained worldwide attention (at least, among people who pay attention to oysters) in 2008 when it was responsible for widespread mortality in French oyster farms. Since then the French strain of the disease has popped up in Britain. Now oyster herpes is being blamed for the 80% mortality that farmers in New Zealand are seeing in their juvenile Pacifics. Scientists in New Zealand estimate that the disease has been in their waters since the 90s, but that warmer water temperatures precipitated the current outbreak. They are also hoping that the surviving 20% of the population can be...