PCSGA Tidings

By Cate Gable
Chi­nook Observer columnist

Chi­nook Observer The mouth of the Willapa Bay and Lead­bet­ter Point are seen from the air in 1978.

WILLAPA BAY — How many peo­ple do you know who are pas­sion­ate about Willapa Bay? Dick Wil­son, pres­i­dent of Bay Cen­ter Mar­i­cul­ture Co., is cer­tainly one to put on the top of the list.

“I love the bay. I love my bay,” said Wil­son, look­ing out over the Willapa mud­flats from the bank of win­dows in his Bay Cen­ter office. “That’s why I choose to work and live here.”

“The bay is a beau­ti­fully func­tion­ing sys­tem — it’s very com­plex,” he adds. “Peo­ple at its mar­gin can cer­tainly do harm but it’s cer­tain types Con­tinue Reading »

Inte­grated Multi-trophic Aqua­cul­ture Work­shop
Penin­sula Col­lege
Port Ange­les, WA USA
Sep­tem­ber 14–15

The Pacific Aqua­cul­ture Cau­cus is orga­niz­ing the first-ever U.S. work­shop to explore Inte­grated Multi-Trophic Aqua­cul­ture on Sep­tem­ber 14–15, 2010, at Penin­sula Col­lege in Port Ange­les, Wash­ing­ton. Also known as IMTA, this evolv­ing approach to seafood pro­duc­tion empha­sizes an ecosys­tem man­age­ment approach where ‘fed’ species, such as fin­fish or shrimp, are farmed in close prox­im­ity to species that can ‘extract’ nutri­ents from the water col­umn, such as shell­fish and sea­weed. The work­shop will high­light find­ings from IMTA pilot projects in Kyuquot Sound, on the West Coast of Van­cou­ver Island, B.C.; Hood Canal, Wash­ing­ton; San Anto­nio, Texas; and Sang­gou Bay, China. The goal of the work­shop is an improved under­stand­ing of IMTA by U.S. aqua­cul­tur­ists, aca­d­e­mics, researchers, and envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions. The work­shop is lim­ited to the first 150 reg­is­trants. The fee for the work­shop is $25. For more infor­ma­tion and reg­is­tra­tion: http://​www​.pacaqua​.org/​P​a​c​A​q​u​a​_​N​e​w​s​/​2​0​1​0​/​0​8​/​i​m​t​a​-​w​o​r​k​s​h​o​p​-​r​e​g​i​s​t​r​a​t​ion

By MARK ALAN LOVEWELL

Bay scal­lops have spawned with a vengeance this sum­mer in Cape Pogue Pond. Once ranked among the most pro­duc­tive ponds for scal­lop land­ings in the state, Cape Pogue is teem­ing with juve­nile bay scal­lops, many about the size of a dime.

Juve­nile scal­lops galore this year.

It takes 18 months for a bay scal­lop to reach har­vestable size, which means if these juve­nile scal­lops sur­vive the com­ing win­ter, pre­da­tion and other envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors, the fall of 2011 will be a ban­ner year for scalloping.

The news of a huge set of bay scal­lops fol­lows the news ear­lier this sum­mer of an enor­mous set of Con­tinue Reading »

By CAIN BURDEAU
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

In this July 1, 2010 pic­ture, Louisiana State Uni­ver­sity assis­tant research pro­fes­sor John Supan holds an oys­ter shell con­tain­ing oys­ter lar­vae, seen as black dots, in his bivalve hatch­ery at the Louisiana Wildlife and Fish­eries Lab­o­ra­tory in Grand Isle, La. Unlike tra­di­tional oys­ters that spawn and get skinny in the sum­mer, Supan has devel­oped ster­ile, “super” cross­breeds that remain fat, mak­ing them one of the best hopes for restor­ing Louisiana’s oys­ter indus­try. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

GRAND ISLE, La. — Biol­o­gist John Supan thinks he has devel­oped what may be the holy grail for oys­ter lovers: a hardy breed of the delec­table shell­fish that stays fat enough for con­sumers to eat through­out the year.

And unlike many oys­ters across the Gulf Coast, ruined by BP’s mas­sive oil spill and the fresh water poured in to fight it, Supan’s oys­ters are all alive.

Now, nearly four months after the spill, Supan’s oys­ters may offer the Gulf oys­ter indus­try a chance for a bet­ter long-term recov­ery. But his spe­cial breed of mod­i­fied oys­ters, which some say are pro­hib­i­tively expen­sive, could be a hard sell to an indus­try reel­ing from the BP disaster.

Most oys­ter­men agree that few oys­ters will be har­vested from the Gulf Coast in the next year or two, sig­nal­ing a poten­tial calamity for shuck­ing houses, oys­ter farm­ers and peo­ple who love a half dozen oys­ters on the half shell. As much as 65 per­cent Con­tinue Reading »

By HEIDI JON SCHMIDT

Pic­ture by John Logan

Province­town, Mass.

CHINCOTEAGUE, Moon­stone, Bayou La Batre, Blue Point, Well­fleet, Malpeque … this was what I knew of the sea as a child: the list of oys­ters on the menu board at Grand Cen­tral Terminal’s Oys­ter Bar. My father used to take my sis­ter, Laura, and me there after our par­ents divorced.

I had never been close to my father and was shy dur­ing these meals. At the Oys­ter Bar, we didn’t have to face each other; we could sit side by side on barstools watch­ing the wait­ers in their white aprons as they opened oys­ter after oys­ter, each with one deft flick of the wrist. These men had dig­nity and com­po­sure such as I’d never seen. They were giv­ing a Con­tinue Reading »

The rapid growth of the oys­ter aqua­cul­ture indus­try in Rhode Island has raised ques­tions about how many oys­ter farms Nar­ra­gansett Bay and the state’s salt ponds can sup­port. But a study by a Uni­ver­sity of Rhode Island grad­u­ate stu­dent has found that these ecosys­tems can with­stand con­tin­ued high rates of aqua­cul­ture growth with­out caus­ing eco­log­i­cal harm.

Car­rie Byron, a doc­toral stu­dent in the URI Depart­ment of Fish­eries, Ani­mal and Vet­eri­nary Sci­ence, exam­ined the eco­log­i­cal car­ry­ing capac­ity of the waters that cur­rently con­tain leases for oys­ter aqua­cul­ture in the state, includ­ing Nar­ra­gansett Bay and five South County salt ponds.

‘The farms are part of a greater ecosys­tem, and we want to make sure the whole sys­tem remains healthy,’ said Con­tinue Reading »

By DAVID KAMP

BENEATH a float­ing dock off Gov­er­nors Island, tucked behind the squat octag­o­nal white ven­ti­la­tion tower for the Brooklyn-Battery Tun­nel, there are oys­ters grow­ing in New York Harbor.

And not just any oys­ters. These lit­tle bivalves, 500,000 strong, make up the largest con­cen­trated oys­ter pop­u­la­tion that the har­bor has seen in per­haps a century.

On a recent spring day, Pete Mali­nowski, who tends to these oys­ters, removed one of the metal grates that have been fit­ted into the dock’s sur­face, reveal­ing a series of silos, as he calls the 60-gallon plas­tic tubs in which his charges live. He plunged his hand into a silo and pulled up a few spec­i­mens for exam­i­na­tion. They were small, maybe an inch and a quar­ter long, but they looked like nor­mal oys­ters: ridged, craggy and tightly shut — not the grotesque mutant mol­lusks that the words “cul­ti­vated in New York City waters” might suggest.

“I was skep­ti­cal about their rate of sur­vival because they all came in at two mil­lime­ters, when they’re pretty vul­ner­a­ble,” Mr. Mali­nowski said. “But look at this, the papery-thin part.” He pointed to Con­tinue Reading »

“It’s all about the water quality…”

Meet Nel­lie Wu, the oys­ter spe­cial­ist and Gen­eral Man­ager of W&T Seafood, a family-owned and oper­ated seafood dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pany based in Brook­lyn, New York. Nellie’s com­pany has been the link to con­nect­ing great NYC chefs and restau­rants to West Coast shell­fish farms, namely Tay­lor Shell­fish Farms, for the past 25 years – sup­ply­ing pre­miere oys­ter hubs like The Grand Cen­tral Oys­ter Bar with famed West Coast oys­ters like Tot­ten Inlet Vir­gini­cas, Pacifics, Kumamo­tos, Fanny Bay Oys­ters, Kusshis, Olympias and Euro­pean Flats.

Nellie’s pas­sion­ate about West Coast oys­ters not only from a sus­tain­abil­ity stand­point, but also from a taste stand­point. She firmly believes they are some of the best tast­ing oys­ters you can get in North Amer­ica. And with the local food move­ment inspir­ing more NYers to eat locally, she just wants peo­ple to under­stand the need for sup­port­ing region­ally grown food as well, espe­cially ones with a good mis­sion behind it.

So, I hope you enjoy this piece on West Coast oys­ters with Nel­lie Wu, the first of many pieces on seafood and shell­fish farm­ing I’ll be shar­ing this sum­mer.  We trav­eled together to Hood Canal and South­ern Puget Sound and boarded fer­ries all the way up to Van­cou­ver Island in British Colum­bia to make sure you saw for your­self where good shell­fish comes from.

And to join Nel­lie in her quest to teach oth­ers about oys­ters, check out the New York Oys­ter Lovers MeetUp and get started on your own Oys­ter Life List.

Thanks for watch­ing food. curated. Happy Eating!

?**And many thanks to the Tay­lor Shell­fish fam­ily who helped make this trip pos­si­ble.**

By Mike Urch, Seafood­Source con­tribut­ing edi­tor
21 June, 2010 — The British Food Stan­dards Agency (FSA) com­pletely ignores shell­fish in its seafood con­sump­tion rec­om­men­da­tions. This is despite the fact that shell­fish are as nutri­tious as fin­fish and, in some instances, more ben­e­fi­cial to human health.

The agency advises con­sumers to eat at least two por­tions of fish a week, includ­ing one of oily fish, but there is no men­tion of whether peo­ple should include shell­fish as one of their seafood meal options.

“The FSA should be includ­ing shell­fish in its two-a-week mes­sage,” said Tom Pick­erell, direc­tor of the Shell­fish Con­tinue Reading »

(This recipe uses about half of one geo­duck and will serve 4–6 peo­ple as an appetizer.)

2 tbsp fresh green onion (scal­lions)
1/2 small, ripe papaya, seeded, and diced
Juice of 1/2 lime (approx­i­mately 1 oz)
Half of one 2 pound geo­duck, minced.  (Note:  siphon meat is crunchy and crisp; body meat is more ten­der.  You can either com­bine both types or use just one, depend­ing on your tastes).
2 table­spoons finely chopped cilantro
2 tea­spoons minced fresh jalapeno or Ser­rano pep­per (more to taste)
2 tsp finely minced fresh gin­ger
Salt and pep­per to taste.

Ceviche is good served on rice crack­ers, on slices of cucum­ber of jicama, or on a bed of fresh spring greens sprin­kled with olive oil and a splash of lime.

THE OLYMPIAN

Last Sun­day was the 12^th annual Shell­fish SLURP, a cel­e­bra­tory feast of shell­fish, beer and wine, accented with a live auc­tion, live music and a raw oys­ter speed-eating contest.

Pro­ceeds from the event, hosted by the Pacific Coast Shell­fish Grow­ers Asso­ci­a­tion at Fish Tale Brew­ery in Olympia, help finance habitat-restoration projects, the Hen­der­son Inlet Com­mu­nity Shell­fish Farm and the grow­ers’ twice annual South Sound beach cleanup, which yielded 40 cubic yards of trash in March.

Atten­dance was down a bit, but the 365 patrons raised more than $27,000, up about $2,000 this year in part because of a suc­cess­ful auc­tion con­ducted by Denny Heck, Con­tinue Reading »

By Rob Rogers Posted: 05/28/2010 04:10:49 PM PDT  Updated: 05/29/2010 10:24:04 AM PDT

Almost every pho­to­graph in Evvy Eisen’s new exhibit at Domini­can Uni­ver­sity fea­tures some­one who works at the Drakes Bay Oys­ter Co.

Yet none of the photographer’s 60 black-and-white por­traits attempts to address the long-simmering dis­pute between the oys­ter farm and its land­lord, the Point Reyes National Seashore. Nor do the images in “Oys­ter Farm: Pho­tographs of Drakes Bay Oys­ter Com­pany” focus on the beauty of Drakes Estero, or the day-to-day tasks of the oys­ter trade.

Instead, Eisen’s sub­jects stare directly at the cam­era, com­posed and con­fi­dent, Con­tinue Reading »