Oyster Blog — Oysters

Olympia oysters are the only oyster species native to the west coast of North America. They're small and intense, with a surprisingly coppery flavor. Olympias were an important food source for Native Americans, and a big hit with everybody who came later. Commercial harvest of wild Olympia oysters peaked in Puget Sound in the late 1890s, when schooners full of oysters were shipped down to San Francisco to feed the hungry (and flush) gold miners. But by the 1920s, the Sound's Olympia oyster population began to decline due to a combination of pollution and overharvesting. The bigger, heartier, and meatier...

The fringe, or bill, is the most colorful part of the oyster shell. Sometimes the bill is dark, sometimes it's very light:   Or even multi-colored: This analysis of oyster cultivation in Korea claims that an oyster's shell color, along with its growth rate and spawning season, is determined by growing location. According to this study, oysters grown in the most favorable conditions grow fastest, get biggest, spawn latest, and develop light gray shells. We think the color differences are genetic as well as environmental. The oysters in the middle picture above are very different in color, and yet were harvested...

In light of the previous post exhorting everyone to cook all shellfish, we thought it appropriate to offer a guide to barbecuing oysters. You need: Barbecue. Or fire. Oyster knife (or equivalent), plus gloves, hot pads, and/or tongs for handling hot shells. Pot of melted butter and garlic, hot sauce, horseradish, lemon, etc. Oysters. If you're feeling adventurous, you could buy oyster clusters as opposed to oyster singles. They're more difficult to barbecue than oyster singles, but a whole lot cheaper. We sell oyster clusters by the bushel in our retail store (they're not available online) for a price so...

        Yes! You can find pearls in Hama Hama oysters. The shuckers normally find several a day. Pacific oyster pearls aren't valuable, but they are really cool. (Jewelry pearls are produced by pearl oysters, which are in a different genus than edible oysters. Read this for more information about cultured and wild pearls.)   These pearls (there were originally 600 of them) all came from ONE medium sized (and extremely irritable) oyster.  

Wednesday, June 4th was the lowest tide of the year. The tide dropped to -4.3 around noon, and then rose to a 12.3 high tide in the evening. A group of people from the Seattle Oceanaire restaurant came out to celebrate the low tide and learn a little bit about Hama Hama oysters. Adam gave them a walking tour of the beach, going over everything from oyster seasonality and reproduction to the challenges of predicting the effect of atmospheric pressure on tidal changes. They gobbled it up, and they also ate an impressive quantity of shellfish. All in the name...