Oyster Blog

  • Apr 22, 2008: Quality Control. Somebody's gotta do it.

    The camera caught up with Adam and Louie wandering through the single oyster pens one blindingly-sunny day in late March. It was the first daylight low tide of the season. Hello there! Finding an oyster to sample wasn't terribly difficult....

  • Apr 16, 2008: Hama Hama in the Belly

    Larry from New Jersey had some clams, oysters, and smoked salmon sent to him as a birthday gift. We'd like to eat at Larry's house some day; he sounds like someone who knows food. Here's how he prepared the seafood:...

  • Apr 16, 2008: Gooeyduck

    The geoduck clam is the biggest clam in the world. Pictured here is a teensy two year old, but they can live to be 150 years old, or older. They frequently weigh more than 5 pounds. And yes, they're ridiculous....

  • Apr 14, 2008: Champion Deep Dish

    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. Read the AP article here for a glimpse into...

  • Apr 11, 2008: Tree Cookie Signs

    That's a lot of tree. The giant 'cookie' came from a four hundred year old Douglas fir tree that fell down a long time ago. A big flood washed the tree down the canyon and left it serendipitously in a hayfield. We...

  • Apr 10, 2008: Oyster Conformation

    The ideal oyster is cup-shaped with a wide, fluted edge tapering towards the hinge. Healthy, growing oysters are very fluted and frequently very colorful, whereas an oyster that's starting to atrophy will have rounded, colorless edges. The oyster above was...

  • Apr 9, 2008: Sea Stars: Not Really That Cute

    Underside of a sea star, up close. The entrance to the mouth is covered by a mass of tube feet. The mouth opens up into the mobile cardiac stomach, which leads to a fixed stomach, which leads to the anus,...

  • Apr 8, 2008: Confused Flowers

    Spring is taking its sweet time getting here.

  • Apr 7, 2008: Sticky Fingers

    Sea stars, the echinoderms formerly known as starfish, have neither brains nor blood. Their circulatory system uses filtered sea water, and their central nervous system is spread out among the rays, or legs, which scientists believe communicate sensory information to...

  • Apr 1, 2008: Hood Canal History

    Hood Canal, circa 2008. The near dot in the picture is a seal, the far dot is a boat. In the mid 1800s, before Washington was a state, civic minded leaders in the territory decided that they needed to do...

  • Mar 28, 2008: In case you didn't believe us:

    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...

  • Mar 27, 2008: A Million Little Oysters

    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...