Oysters: A Pearl of an Industry

Host:
With their lumpy grey shells and their gooey insides, oysters aren’t much to look at. But, oh, there’s nothing like the way they taste. 

For many food lovers around the world, oysters are considered a sumptuous delicacy, right up there with champagne and caviar. 

And, as you’ll hear on this episode of Farms, Food and You, they have tremendous value beyond the dinner plate. 

Our guest today is Jane Harrison, a coastal economics Extension specialist with North Carolina Sea Grant. And she’s also a faculty member in the colleges of Natural Resources and Agriculture and Life Sciences at NC State University. 

She’ll delve into a topic covered in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ magazine this month, discussing the growing farm industry for North Carolina oysters and a tourism effort aimed at helping garner greater awareness of this sometimes-misunderstood creature.

HOST:

One thing you might not know about North Carolina oysters? These days, nearly half of them are not harvested from wild populations. Instead, they are grown at shellfish farms that dot the shores of the Atlantic Ocean and the estuaries where fresh- and saltwaters mix. 

HARRISON:

In 2016 less than a decade ago, most of the economic impact of shellfish came from the harvest of wild oysters and clams. But in 2019, for the first time, the harvest of farmed oysters surpassed wild.

Last I checked, there were over 300 farms – so shellfish farms. 

There’s really been a sea change in terms of local oyster supply over the last decade. We have seen so many oyster growers start to operate. … And what’s exciting about that, it means that you could go to a restaurant year-round and get North Carolina oysters.

HOST: 

Did you catch that Harrison said “year-round”? That’s something else you might not understand about oysters todays: Contrary to handed-down wisdom, it’s OK to eat them in months that don’t end in Rs.

HARRISON:

Now, wild oysters are only available in our state from October 15^th to about April. So those are the fall-winter months. And the reason that you don’t eat wild oysters in the summer months is because that’s spawning season. So that’s when we want to leave the oysters to do their thing and come back to us. Whereas shellfish farms don’t have to worry about that. They’re really using oyster seed, and so they’re not worried about … wild oyster populations.  

And it’s a great, I’d say, opportunity also to relieve pressures on our wild oysters. So if you’re in a restaurant in the summer months in North Carolina and you see North Carolina oysters on the menu, they are safe to eat, and they are delicious.

HOST: 

In fact, oysters are safe in the non-R months, and they’re safe to eat raw, as long as you’re not immune-compromised or have a chronic health issue.

HARRISON:

There are very strict regulations when it comes to the refrigeration aspects of production. So I know that can be a concern for some folks about health issues. Vibrio is a major pathogen that we have to worry about in our coastal waters, but generally that only affects oysters in very hot places, more like the Gulf. We have not had any issues in North Carolina because of Vibrio, but that’s … another reason why you always need to refrigerate and bring your oysters down to temperature to keep them safe and healthy to eat. 

If I know where the oysters are from, if I know they’re North Carolina oysters, I happily eat them raw all day long. But it you are immune-compromised, then certainly I recommend cooking them – so maybe broiling them, baking them, roasting them. 

HOST:

Putting oysters on the menu year-round is just one of the benefits of the oyster-growing industry. In North Carolina, the rise of farmed oysters is helping make up for huge losses in wild shellfish populations and harvests that have occurred over the past 120 years. 

In 1902, North Carolina harvests of eastern oysters peaked at 800,000 bushels, then fell to little more than 37,000 bushels of wild oysters in 1994. Overharvesting, the loss of suitable places for juvenile oysters to settle, degraded water quality, and diseases have all played a part. 

In recent decades, wild oyster harvests have staged a comeback, thanks to efforts to restore their habitat and protect them from diseases. But yields remain a fraction of what they were back in the early 1900s. 

HARRISON:
Wild fisheries are limited for a number of reasons, whether it’s habitat change or degradation. Sometimes it’s climate change affecting our fisheries – so oysters, they don’t move much, but when you look at finfish, they will head north if their looking for colder waters. And so we’ve seen a lot of movement of fisheries because of the warming of seas. 

But when it comes to really restoring our wild oyster populations, I think at this point we’re focused on activities to bring that oyster seed, wild seed and the shell materials – so we also call that cultch – C-U-L-T-C-H – back into the environment because if you have … the baby oyster floating out there in the water column and it has nothing to attach to, it doesn’t have anywhere to go. And so there are kind of two pieces there, where you need both the baby oyster and the house for it.

HOST:

That housing made of old shells is not just good for the oysters. It’s important to other marine life and to the people who depend on that marine life for food and for income.

HARRISON:

One of the major success stories of oysters is that they are a keystone species in the coastal ecosystem. So they filter water, they improve water quality and provide habitat for other marine creatures, and they are food for other organisms. 

So when you see a wild oyster reef out in the coastal areas, that’s where you’re going to find your spawning fish, your baby crabs, all the fish that are hiding from predators – that’s their place to grow up. We want to see our wild oyster populations grow tremendously.

HOST:

Couple the state’s efforts to restore wild oyster populations with an increasingly important oyster farming industry, and some say that the time is right to make North Carolina and Virginia, our neighbor to the north, the Napa Valley of oysters. 

Still, some efforts to increase North Carolina oysters and clams from a $30 million a year industry to a hundred million have met with opposition raised in the interest of tourism. 

But for Harrison, oysters and tourism go hand-in-hand. She leads the NC Oyster Trail, a grassroots effort aimed at ensuring that oysters remain a vital part of the state’s economy and culture. Launched in 2020, the trail has garnered national media attention and sparked local enthusiasm.

HARRISON:

The North Carolina Oyster Trail is an avenue to connect North Carolinians with where oysters come from. So whether you’re interested in eating them, maybe you want to know where they live, where they grow up. Maybe you want to get out in a boat and see how they’re grown. With shellfish mariculture, we try to really provide very unique oyster experiences across the state.

So in the coastal areas, for example, you could go on a shellfish farm tour. So you can go out with a oyster grower and see their gear, the technology that they’re using, and even perhaps taste an oyster right from the water. 

If you’re a little bit inland, like the Triangle or Charlotte or Greensboro area, I recommend you check out one of the seafood restaurants or restaurants that serve North Carolina oysters that are featured on the North Carolina Oyster Trail.

HOST:

Harrison says that the trail grew in response to growers’ and fishers’ desire for consumers to gain a better understanding of oysters and their industry.

HARRISON:

I think there’s been a long-held assumption that oysters from Massachusetts or Washington State or Prince Edward Island – other places around the world – were somehow more desirable than our oysters. But yet we have some of the, I think, tastiest oysters on the planet, and some really special ones, too.

HOST:

One of the “special ones” that Harrison points to makes a myth out of my statement that oysters are not much to look at. She says the green gill oyster is far from homely.

HARRISON:

This is an oyster that the gills look slightly green, which in years past, people would’ve thought ‘Uh-oh. I’m not supposed to eat that.’ But actually it’s because they’ve eaten a particular type of algae that makes them green and they have a little bit different flavor, and they’re beautiful when you look at them.

And so that’s something that our oyster farmers have capitalized. … They saw some French oyster growers also offering this kind of oyster at a premium, so a higher price, and now they’re doing that. So it’s a special time of year in the winter months when these oysters take on those conditions. And so that’s kind of an exciting specialty oyster for our growers.

I’m really excited to see the market grow, grow, grow. When you think about demand for seafood, it’s high. We all, many of us, love to eat seafood, and it’s a little bit expensive. So if we can bring the supply up, especially of a sustainably harvested seafood product, then that can allow the prices to go down a ittle bit, and that would allow more people to enjoy the super delicious and very nutritions lean protein source. I always think of oysters as one of the most sustainable and healthy-for-use proteins that’s out there. So more people, I think, should have access to that.

HOST:

Through the NC Oyster Trail, Harrison and her partners are helping to make sure that they do. And with 80 sites to choose from, Harrison has a hard time choosing a favorite, but she paints an enticing picture of what’s out there to explore.

HARRISON:

Well, definitely any of our shellfish farm tours. So one of my favorites, Ghost Fleet Oyster Company, they are out near Hampstead – central cost – and they just do a fabulous job taking you around, showing you what their life is like, being oyster farmers. They are, I think, maybe natural educators. I love hearing the stories of our shellfish growers. 

There’s another spot, Hooper Family Seafood, and they actually grow clams, and Mark Hooper and his wife, Penny, they have also been commercial fishers. So Mark goes out, he does crabbing, he harvests other kinds of seafood, but I love visiting where they live. They live in down East Carteret County, just a little bit further east than Beaufort. And it’s just breathtakingly beautiful to see where they are doing this work. Just to see the care that they take with their seafood and to hear their stories too, of what they’ve seen out in the water, the changes that are coming, both good and bad. I love to have that knowledge.

HOST:

To find out more about the NC Oyster Trail, check out the latest issue of CALS Magazine at magazine.cals.ncsu.edu or the trail’s website at nc oyster trail dot org to tailor your next oyster outing.

Thank you for joining us on Farms, Food and You, produced by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at North Carolina State University. We hope you’ll be back to listen again next time, as we take a look at a new set of courses designed to open doors to diverse career options in the state’s meat processing industry.

About Jane Harrison

Jane Harrison is a coastal economics Extension specialist with North Carolina Sea Grant and a faculty member in North Carolina State University’s College of Natural Resources and College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, where she teaches a course on rural economics. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from The Ohio State University and a Ph.D. in natural resources management from Oregon State University. Her work informs coastal decision makers at the intersection of sustainable use of ocean and coastal resources and economic development.