oysters – RI Future

Saturday marked the first ever Ocean State Oyster Festival, celebrating the resurgent and exploding oyster industry in Rhode Island, held at the Riverwalk in Providence.

Attendees were both curious and hungry. Smiles and a light-hearted attitude infected all those wandering around the festival looking for the next shellfish to slurp.

“For me it’s the history, the direct heritage of it all,” said Steven Thompson, a Warren Town Council member who spoke at length the “rebuilding” of the oyster industry in his town, which he said was “decimated”and is now growing again.

Farms from across the Ocean State came to display and provide the all-important oysters while music played and smiles were brought to nearly every face.

Oysters on ice from Salt Pond Oysters, shucked and ready for slurping.

Oysters are a cornerstone of Rhode Island heritage. According to the Ocean State Oyster Festival oyster farming as far back as 1900 was a thriving industry in RI, Point Judith Pond provided an unmatched bounty of oysters. The industry grew fast with the exponential boom putting immense pressure on local oyster populations. Over fishing decimated the shellfish nearly driving them into extinction. The growth of industry drove itself into near collapse.

About 20 years ago Rhode Island sustainable aquaculture movement began and sparked the current oyster farming climate.

“It’s blowin’ up. From a few farms 15 years ago to now almost 50,” said Travis Lundgre, an employee of Salt Pond Oysters.

When asked why he loves it Lundgre said, “The calm of it all. Oyster farming is just different, different from every other kind of farming.”

Jesse Kwan, of the Oyster Country Club, called them “the foundation of the oceans.”

In Rhode Island, oysters are the quintessential local food, with nearly every farm supplying restaurants around the state almost exclusively. Some of the larger farms, including Salt Pond Oysters, Walrus & Carpenter Oysters, and Salt Water Farms, do export their stock to other states and around the country as well.

“You could eat one and I could eat one and we’d taste two different things,” said Lauren Nutini of Salt Water Farms, the largest oyster farm in Rhode Island.

With programs like the Blount Shellfish Hatchery at Roger Williams University, Blount Fine Foods, based in Warren, provided the endowment to create the only shellfish hatchery in Rhode Island. Warren was historically an oyster farming community and now that same community is pulling together in efforts to restore the oyster farms.

The farms themselves use sustainable farming techniques to ensure the oysters not only thrive but provide a healthy ecosystem around them. One such practice is “reseeding” or pouring the old shells back into the farms allowing the baby shellfish something to latch onto and grow before popping off and being harvested.

Oysters filter nearly 50 gallons of water a day, with some farms having 6 million animals, that’s over 300 million gallons of water being cleaned cumulatively a day for years as they mature and grow.

“There’s nothing better after a day at the beach,” said attendee Fred Jodry, “It’s a mouthful of the ocean.” Jodry explained his intrigue with the resurgence of oyster farming in Rhode Island. “Industry took it out, and it’s nice to see this coming back.”

Mark Goerner was a local lobsterman for twenty years before the fishery started to dry up.

He still works the waters of the West Passage of Narragansett Bay in the Newshell, his bright red Novi (Nova Scotia-style fishing boat) often docked at Ft. Getty in Jamestown.

But he doesn’t look for lobster traps anymore. Now he uses the Newshell to service his oyster farm just south of the Jamestown Bridge.

There are 52 oyster farms in Rhode Island spread out over 176 acres – a little more than half in Narragansett Bay (one as far north as Warwick) with the remaining 82 acres in one of four South County salt ponds.

As recently as the early 1990’s, there were no oysters in Narragansett Bay. Or not nearly enough to make any money harvesting. Then Bob “Skid” Rheault applied for an aquaculture permit with CRMC. “He was the vanguard,” explained Dale Leavitt, an aquaculture expert at Roger Williams University. “It was a three or four year permitting process.”

Since then the industry has boomed, according to state Coastal Resources Management Council data. In 2013, Rhode Island aquaculturists sold more than 6 million oysters.

That means real money for the many restaurants, seafood stores and oyster bars that sell this delectable shellfish.”It’s providing local seafood in an era when most of our fish is imported,” said David Beutel, CRMC aquaculture coordinator. “That’s certainly valuable to us as a state.”

What’s more, Beutel and Leavitt both said oysters improve water quality. The shellfish filter fish-kill inducing nutrients out of Narragansett Bay. An oysters can filter 50 gallons of water daily, according to Leavitt. “They provide an important ecological service,” he said.

The average oyster take about 18 months to mature, said Beutel, and are then sold to local distributors who sell them here in Rhode Island and in 47 other states. Beutel said Alaska and Hawaii were on the list, and he wasn’t certain which two states were not.

They are grown in cages that typically float five or 10 feet below the surface.

“We have an industry that creates more jobs, creates more fresh seafood and leaves the water cleaner than when it started,” said Beutel.

Goerner planted about 400,000 oyster seeds in his first two seasons. This year he’s planting another 300,000.

Today’s chores were an important part of that process. A 4,000 pound anchor in 30-feet-deep water had to be moved into place. This meant Sam Paterson had to go scuba diving to set the chain on the anchor.

Check out the shoes Paterson wears when he dives. Scuba Chucks!

Paterson and Goerner were attaching to the 4,000 pound anchor this underwater lift bag – made by a Rhode Island company!

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Tag: oysters

Inaugural Ocean State Oyster Festival a success

Oysters: the Ocean State’s aquaculture cash crop