Oyster Blog

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 one of three dozen in a package we shipped to California yesterday. In our humble opinion, April is the friendliest oyster month: the water is still cold enough so that the oyster meat is really firm, but it's starting to warm up just enough to let them feed and grow. These are amazingly beautiful, right? Even to people who aren't...

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, which is on the top of the star. Tube feet suctioned onto a rock. Read more about sea stars here.

Spring is taking its sweet time getting here.

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 each other whenever the starfish... whoops, sea star, decides to move or eat. Severed sea star rays normally grow back, and a tropical species known as Linckia can regenerate an entire sea star from a single ray. Some sea stars, like the one above, are predators that feed on mussels, clams, and oysters. The stars first pry the bivalves open,...

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 something to distinguish their homeland and themselves. People on the East Coast still thought of the Washington residents as wild, wooley and completely uncivilized. One astute resident of Union City, Washington, a Mr. Samuel Hood, who'd made a fortune in the shipping industry, took a vacation to New York in 1852 and noticed the considerable fanfare and wealth generated by...