OYSTERING
O N W I L L A PA B AY
WASHINGTON OYSTER FARMERS ARE INHERITORS OF A TRADITION AND WAY OF LIFE THAT GOES BACK TO 1851
STORY AND PHOTOS BY
DWIGHT CASWELL
T
Tim Ritchey uses a shovel to scatter young
oysters on an oyster bed in Willapa Bay.
The oysters had been removed from a
nursery bed where they had grown to
their present size in plastic cages; now
they will mature on a new bed.
12 | February 18, 2016 | coastweekend.com
The windshield wipers clacked back
and forth. Steve Shotwell was at the wheel,
peering through a light rain as his oyster
boat made its way to a spot marked by poles
on Willapa Bay. Deckhand Tim Ritchey at-
tached a hook from the orange hoist and
hauled a submerged longline, covered with
oysters, onto the deck. He cut the bivalves
off the line, deftly opened one of them with
his knife, and offered it to me.
It was the best oyster I’ve ever eaten.
Sweet and salty in perfect combination,
These juvenile oysters, known as “singles,” grew to their present size in- with that hint of honeydew melon that con-
side a plastic cage, which protects them from crab predators. After two noisseurs speak of but which soon fades.
to three months, farmers remove the oysters from the cages and move
Oysters are a food that divides man-
them to a diff erent oyster ground to fatten to maturity.
kind. You either love them or you hate
them. Those who love them really
love them, and if you have a literary
turn of mind even the most direct
and unadorned of prose writers will
wax poetic.
Steve Shotwell and his wife,
Andi, have owned their Elkhorn
Oyster Company in Nemah, Wash-
ington, since 1995. One of the
smallest of almost 30 such oyster
companies on Willapa Bay, they
are the inheritors of a tradition and a
way of life that goes back 165 years,
to 1851.
Oyster middens left by Native
Americans around Willapa Bay
have been dated back at least 4,000
years, but it was not until the early
Steve Shotwell bags cultch, old oyster shells that will serve 1800s that oysters became all the
as a place for spat, aka oyster larvae, to attach. Once at- rage in the United States. The Cal-
tached, the cultch will be spread over nursery beds.
ifornia gold rush created a market
for oysters in San Francisco, and
Charles Russell, a seaman living and trading on Shoalwa-
ter (now Willapa) Bay, had the bright idea of hiring the
natives to collect oysters, load them on a ship, and send
them south. That was in 1851, and Russell had competition
Submitted photo
within months.
Pacifi c oysters were
introduced to Washington
The native oysters in Willapa Bay were the small
in the early 1900s and are
Washington (or Olympia) oysters. Slow growing and
now the main oyster
harvested mercilessly, they began to diminish, a process
farmed in Willapa Bay.
accelerated by the burgeoning logging industry. Today,
the Olympia oyster can still be found in Willapa Bay, but
it is commercially extinct, with a twofold result. Eastern
oysters brought from Chesapeake Bay on the new trans-
continental railroad replaced the local oysters, and in the
late 19th century the ¿ rst oyster farms appeared in Willapa
Bay. Oystermen began marking off their territories with
stakes, and by statehood in 1899 de facto ownership of
these tidal lands, as well as the importance of the indus-
try, was well established. Washington made the unusual
decision to allow private ownership of tidal lands, which
began a history of private stewardship of Willapa Bay that
continues to this day.
After a few years, something wiped
out the eastern oysters, and they were
replaced by Crassostrea gigas, the Pa-
ci¿ c oyster, ¿ rst brought to Washing-
ton by Japanese entrepreneurs around
1900. Willapa oystermen did not begin
raising Paci¿ c oysters until 1928, after
a state law forbade foreign ownership
of land, forcing the Japanese to relin-
quish their tidelands. Paci¿ c oysters
tolerated the tidal range in Willapa,
and as Chesapeake oyster production
diminished, the Willapa industry saw a
revival. Today, one oyster in six in the
United States is grown on the 15,000 acres of Willapa tide-
land oyster farms.
/ive mature Paci¿ c oysters did not do well on the two-
week journey from Japan, so Willapa oystermen began
importing oyster larvae (“spat”) from Japan. They dumped
the cultch (oyster shells with spats attached, or “set”) into
the bay and waited for them to grow to harvestable size.
Eventually, the Paci¿ cs adapted to Willapa and began to
set naturally, but the natural set was unreliable.
Today, virtually all oyster farms in Willapa Bay use
larvae from local hatcheries, which are placed in tanks
with bags of shells (cleaned to provide a good attachment
surface). The spats are cultured for a short time before the
cultch is placed in nursery beds. From that point on, each
oyster farmer has his own way of growing the oysters to
their ¿ nal size.
As Steve Shotwell drove his boat toward a patch of
tidelands he owns, an oyster dredge crossed the bow, a
hundred yards out. Dredging is a traditional means of cul-
tivation. Cultch is scattered on the ground — the bottom
— and later harvested with a dredge. “They occasionally
harrow it,” Shotwell explained. “It À ips the oysters out of
the mud so they grow better and they don’t suffocate.”
However, dredging is made dif¿ cult by the increasing
number of native ghost shrimp in Willapa Bay. The shrimp
burrow in the hard-packed bottom, making it too soft to sup-
port oyster beds; the oysters sink into the mud and die.
We arrived at one of Shotwell’s beds, where
Tim Ritchey used a shovel to scatter oysters. The
oysters had been removed from
a bed where they had grown to
their present size in plastic cages,
protected from crabs; now they
would mature on the new bed.
Shotwell explained that oyster
grounds differ. A seedbed can’t
be too soft, and conditions on an-
other bed may be more favorable
for fattening oysters to maturity.
Shotwell increasingly grows
oysters on longlines, which in-
volves spacing set shells along
rope suspended above the bottom
from PVC posts. This overcomes shrimp
problems, reduces predation from crabs, and produces good
yields of high quality oysters. The practice is labor intensive,
though, and exposure to storms and fowling by weed and
debris makes some areas unsuitable for longlines.
Like most growers, Shotwell is also growing more
“singles” than in the past. These are oysters grown indi-
vidually, protected in trays or cages. Of uniform size and
quality, singles are ideally suited to the growing market for
live in-shell oysters.
Shotwell’s small Elkhorn Oyster Company has a Shell-
Oysters Shelburne
By chef Cedar Martin
of the Shelburne Inn
Skilled workers shuck oysters at Elkhorn Oyster Company, one of the smallest of almost 30 such oyster companies on Willapa Bay.
HOW TO
SHUCK AN OYSTER
Today, one
oyster in six in
the United States
is grown on the
15,000 acres of
Willapa tideland
oyster farms.
“As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that
the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and
as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the
wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.”
— Ernest Hemingway, “A Moveable Feast”
stock Shipper license and supplies local customers and dis-
tributors in Washington and California with oysters in the
shell. The company provides oysters in quantity for par-
ties and fundraising events; contact Shotwell through
his website, www.elkhornoyster.com. Most Willapa
oysters are shucked at larger ³Shucker-3acker´ ¿ rms by
skilled workers who can shuck an oyster every few sec-
onds (at three cents an oyster, the best can earn $200 a
day), and then sold in containers according to size.
“I was raised on fried oysters,” Shotwell says, “and
I’ve been working in the industry since childhood, sum-
mers and after school. It’s the only thing I wanted to do and
knew how to do.”
Tim Ritchey was raised in the distant deserts of south-
ern California, but he is no less dedicated to the oystering
way of life. “It’s a lot of work,’ he says, “but a day in June
can be absolutely gorgeous. Even a nasty day on the bay is
better than a day working in an of¿ ce.”
Use an oyster knife: If you slip, it’s too
dull to do any damage, but it’s infl exible and
sharp enough to open the shell. If you’re open-
ing a lot of oysters you’ll fi nd rubber gloves,
the heavier the better, a valuable addition.
What to do: Hold the oyster with the fl at
side up. You’ll often hear that the best place to
insert the knife is at or near the hinge. No pro-
fessional shucker does this. Instead, stab the
opposite end of the oyster, about a half-inch or
a little more in from the lip of the shell. Insert
the point of the knife through the hole you’ve
just created. The muscle that attaches the oys-
ter to the shell is just beyond the point of your
knife, on the fl at side of the shell. With your
knife parallel to the shell, cut the muscle, and
then pry the fl at half of the shell way from the
other half. You now have a perfect oyster rest-
ing in its liquid. If you wish, run your knife under
the oyster to make sure there is no attachment
to the other side. Add Mignonette. Enjoy.
Ingredients
1 pound chopped fresh baby spinach
1 tablespoon chopped shallot
½ teaspoon chopped garlic
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon ground white pepper
2 ounces ouzo
1 cup heavy cream
6 oysters on half shell
Bread crumbs as needed
Directions
Heat olive oil, add shallots and
garlic. Cook until translucent. Add
spinach, salt, and pepper. Sautee until
spinach is wilted. Add ouzo and cook
off alcohol. Remove spinach from pan
and add heavy cream; reduce to half.
Return spinach to pan and cool to
room temperature. Top oysters with
spinach mixture and bread crumbs
as desired. Bake in preheated oven at
400˚ for 15-20 minutes.
Mignonette with
raw oysters
Ingredients
¼ cup red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon minced shallot
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black
pepper
12 fresh large oysters
Directions
Stir vinegar, shallot and pepper in
a small bowl. Drizzle over oysters.
Variations: use champagne vin-
egar. Add any of these: pinch of sug-
ar, parsley leaves, minced cucumber,
minced ginger.
February 18, 2016 | coastweekend.com | 13