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 of a smaller female hermit crab. He'll drag her around with him until she molts, at which point he'll fertilize her eggs. Visit our March 17th post to learn more about hermit crabs. (Sorry that we can't link directly to the post. It's a work in progress.) Today's hermit crab entry is dedicated to the little girl who just stopped...

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 from predators such as snails and crab. The bags were strung together and then placed out on the beach. In 3 months, the oysters will be big enough to face life on the beach without the protection of the bags. And after another 2 years or so, the oysters will be big enough to hit the market as beautiful, and...

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 Dog has lived on Hood Canal, but this was the first time he'd expressed interest in oysters. (Caveat: only in Lilliwaup, where the hens lay soft-boiled eggs and the lemonade springs, would it be o.k. to feed world-class shellfish to a dog.)   Area Dog signals interest in oyster... gets ignored... and then finds the stash. Would somebody please just...

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 big and little oysters. We sell four sizes of oysters: yearling, extra small, small and medium. Pictured above are oysters from both ends of the spectrum, the yearling and the medium.

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. The really exciting thing about LLTK is that they've developed and implemented a hatchery system that preserves the genetic diversity of the wild fish populations. They take a small number of eggs out of the redds (or nests) produced by native, wild fish, then hatch the eggs in a hatchery and raise the fish for 4 to 5 years before...