Oyster Blog

  • Oct 10, 2008: Woodworker Phil

    Phil Lewis Day, a local guy who works wonders with wood, stopped by to show us some of his creations.  The basket below is made out of many pieces of firewood glued together and then polished smooth in a lathe......

  • Oct 6, 2008: Two Unrelated Videos

    The first is a profile of Jerry Yamashita, who grows oysters in Puget Sound near Olympia, Washington. Jerry offers a pretty good description of the technical (not political) difficulties involved with farming shellfish downstream from residential development. The second is...

  • Oct 2, 2008: Oyster Farmers Gather in the Desert

    This year the Pacific Coast Shellfish Growers Association's annual conference is in Lake Chelan, an area of Eastern Washington which purportedly looks something like this: But, from what we can tell, really looks more like this: (apologies for the cell...

  • Sep 30, 2008: The Seattle Times re-discovers Hood Canal

    Read it here.

  • Sep 25, 2008: Rock Crab

    The Pacific red rock crab (Cancer productus) lives in the shadow of the more popular Dungeness crab (C. magister). Really, who's ever heard of a rock crab??? Here, they confront one another. Which one is the rock? The one with...

  • Sep 24, 2008: Clam Identification 101

    Native littleneck clam on the left, Manila steamer on the right. Manilas were introduced to Puget Sound along with the Pacific Oyster in the 1950s and, like the oyster, have since naturalized. They're now the main clam species grown and...

  • Sep 16, 2008: Adios Amigo

    Fall intern Luke Reynolds has moved on to bigger and better places (namely, the fall tour with his band Pictures and Sound), and our first Luke-less Monday in several weeks felt kinda flat. During his three week tenure at Hama...

  • Sep 12, 2008: Pearls Galore

    A Lebanese woman found 26 pearls in a single oyster and a) made international headlines and b) is thinking of submitting her discovery to the Guinness Book of World Records. Who knew oysters could make you famous? Not us, otherwise...

  • Sep 11, 2008: On the Barge

    ...with this guy: (Not sure whether that blurry appendage on the left belongs to Adam, or if Miguel is standing right behind him....) Views from the Captain's House: The barge goes out at high tide and picks up full tubs...

  • Sep 10, 2008: Sunny September

    Because the muddy clam net featured in the last post's video didn't quite cut it for people wanting proof that this is indeed the nicest time of year on the Canal, we took a few scenic shots this morning to...

  • Sep 4, 2008: Oyster World Update

    Chesapeake Bay: The oyster native to the East Coast, Crassostrea virginica, hasn't been doing well in the Chesapeake for a while. Reasons for the virginica's decline include overharvesting, pollution, and disease. The loss of the native oyster reefs has hurt...

  • Sep 3, 2008: Huge Oyster

    This oyster was so impressive Teresa had to save it for show-and-tell. What makes this oyster particularly amazing is that it was shucked in August, when our oysters are normally at their smallest. Not impressed? Need a sense of scale?...