Oyster Merroir of Puget Sound and Hood Canal

Oysters are a grazing animal, yet they're stuck in place - there's no seasonal migration or moving to greener pastures. What they eat determines how they taste, which is why they reflect place so beautifully. Their salinity, texture, and flavor are all influenced by the algae, temperature, organic material, and mineral content of the surrounding water. When oyster farmers use the term merroir, they're referring to the influence of environmental conditions on an oyster's flavor and seasonality.

The biophysical properties that influence an oyster's growth and flavor are highly seasonal and vary widely bay to bay. Puget Sound, with its complicated inlets (courtesy of thousands of years of glaciation), produces a tremendous variety of oysters. Several years ago we began growing oysters in different locations precisely because of this seasonality. With multiple farm sites, we can switch up our harvests to always sell the safest, most delicious oysters. Plus, it's fun to compare and contrast oysters and to connect to different aquatic areas of the world via an oyster platter.

So, keeping in mind that every year (and every season) brings a slightly different flavor, and that aquatic micro-climates exist.... we'd like to introduce you to our farm sites around Puget Sound, and do our best to characterize the oysters that grow there. 

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Northern Olympic Peninsula

One summer day a decade or so ago, Adam got a cold water headache while surfing in the Straits, and realization struck. The water was cold. An hour drive south, at our home farm in Hood Canal, summertime water temperatures can hit 70 degrees, but up in the Straits of Juan de Fuca, where prevailing southerly winds bring cold water in from the Pacific Ocean, summertime water temps hover between 50 and 60 degrees. Shortly after that fateful surf trip, we met a fellow multi-generational family that had tideflats to spare, arranged to lease their beaches, and a farm was born.

We work with a handful of partner farms in this area (see Aphrodite and Fjordlux) and have two farm sites on the Northern Olympic Peninsula, in Discovery Bay and Port Townsend Bay. Our PT Bay farm is near a tiny island called Skunk Island.

We grow our Disco Hamas in Discovery Bay, and Summerstones and Summer Blues at the Skunk Island farm. When we first started these farms, production was so low that we only sold these oysters during the summer (hence their names), but now, a decade later, these oysters are commonly available year round. 

Discovery Bay Oyster Farm by Hama Hama

Disco Hamas are a bag-on-beach Pacific from Discovery Bay, shown above.

Left, picking Summerstones off the beach. Right, heading towards the tumble farm at Skunk Island.

Flavor wise, the oysters from the Northern Olympic Peninsula are usually nicely salty (courtesy of proximity to the ocean) and decently plump (those southerly winds deliver the algae). They have a more pronounced (although still subtle) seaweed flavor than our Hood Canal oysters.

Hood Canal (Hama Hama HQ)

Hood Canal is a 50 mile long glacially carved fjord that separates the Olympic Peninsula from the rest of the continent. It's narrow and deep - up to 600 feet deep in places - except for its estuaries, which are big (due to the amount of freshwater pouring out of the Olympic Mountains) and tidal. Our home is halfway up the Canal, at the mouth of the Hamma Hamma River.

In the summertime, when the tides are low during the day, the incoming water absorbs heat from hundreds of acres of sand and gravel tideflats. This causes thermal stratification: the water is cold down deep, but warm (up to 70 degrees or warmer) at the top. The warm water temperatures allow the Pacific oyster to reproduce in the wild and make for great swimming, but come with a downside because warm water holds more naturally-occurring saltwater bacteria than cold water. At our farm, we're fortunate that the river is ice cold all summer and can function as a sort off on-site refrigerator to keep product cool after it's harvested, but historically our company would scale back operations in the heat of summer, selling only clams and shucked oysters, both of which are usually eaten cooked. Now, thanks to state-of-the-art depuration systems that allow oysters to filter out harmful bacteria, we're able to sell Hood Canal oysters on the half shell year round.

The Canal is a very unique oyster farming area. It's a "lean" body of water - meaning there's not usually a ton of algae, so the oysters and clams grow more slowly than they do elsewhere. Flavorwise, oysters from mid to north Hood Canal are known for a pronounced fruity, cucumber-like, "clean" finish. Because the oysters spend so long on the farm growing, and because the Canal is prone to barnacle sets and wild reproduction, beach grown oysters from the Hood Canal tend to wild, rugged shells. Because they're intertidal, and used to being fully exposed during the low tides, they have long shelf lives and hardy shells. 

We grow our namesake oyster, the Hama Hama, directly on the gravel beaches at the mouth of the Hamma Hamma river. These are hardy oysters, used to being fully exposed by the outgoing tide. They grow slowly and have great shelf lives. 

We also grow Blue Pools, a tumbled pacific, on the Hamma Hamma delta.

Just a bit south of the Hamma Hamma river we have a few small farms near Ayock Point, (pictured below), where we grow bag-on-beach Lucky Pennies and Hood Rocks. 

Southern Puget Sound

The finger inlets of South Puget Sound are famous for their oysters, and for good reason: they have cold water, strong tidal currants, and plentiful algae. They're oyster factories. In some inlets, oysters can reach market size after only 9 months on the beach (compared to 2 to 3 years in Hood Canal). South Puget Sound oysters are known for rich, butter, kelpy flavors. Many of our "partner farm" oysters come from Hammersley Inlet, Eld Inlet, and Pickering Passage. We also farm Sea Cows (tumbled from Hammersley) and several bag-to beach pacifics: Wildcats (Skookum Inlet), Barron Points (Totten Inlet), and Hove Coves (from Hove Cove next to Pickering Passage) as well as Kumamotos and Olympias.

Above: A few of our crew with our partner farmer Duane Fagergren, who grows Calm Cove oysters in Totten Inlet, pictured here with his family. Notice the substrate, which is less rocky and gravelly than Hood Canal. Totten oysters are known for a sweet, buttery finish and benefit from cool water well into the summer season.