Oyster Blog

Here are two grainyhand hermits (Pagarus granosimanus) locked hand in hand. Or claw in shell. The larger male hermit crab, on the left, has his small left claw, which he normally uses for eating, firmly clamped down on the shell...

The stork recently dropped off a crate of oyster seed from a California hatchery. Here's a handful of them:     Jose and Cleo spent an afternoon putting the babies into grow-out bags:     which will protect the seed...

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...

John and Juan at the shucking table. Roberto and Nathan. Roberto's hand is blurry because it's moving wicked fast. We only shuck oyster clusters, and save the single oysters to sell in the shell. The shuckers have to shuck both...

Long Live the Kings, a non-profit group working to restore native salmon populations, has just completed a 12-year steelhead restoration program on the Hamma Hamma River. The project has gotten great coverage from the Kitsap Sun, check it out here....

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...

Hermit Crab in Moon Snail Shell Fragment   This lovely creature is a Hairy Hermit (Pagurus hirsutiusculus)--a species easily identified by the white bands around its walking legs (which you can clearly see in the middle photo). It came in...

Here are some facts you probably didn't know about sea cucumbers: They breathe through their anus. They have a compound in their skin called catch collagen that allows them to liquefy or melt on command. They use this skill to escape...

 Spider crab, shown above, are like Daddy Long Legs... they have a really scary outline, but relatively inefficient pinchers. They might make a mark, but they won't take off your finger. Dungeness crab, on the other hand, are super dangerous...

As it turns out, human inhabitants of the tideflats are shyer than barnacles in a shadow whenever a camera comes around. We did some camera habituation this past Friday, when the shucking plant employees were held captive by the intriguing...

  According to the Principia Cybernetica Project's definition of happiness, happy people are characterized by the belief that they are able to control their situation, whereas unhappy people tend to believe that they are a toy of fate. Yet another...