The daily Astorian., March 15, 2016, Page 12A, Image 12

12A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN TUESDAY, MARCH 15, 2016
Photos by Edward Stratton/The Daily Astorian
Oyster shell piles are commonplace around Willapa Bay, which produces about a quarter of the bivalve mollusks in the U.S.
Oysters: Industry dates back to the mid-19th century
Continued from Page 1A
Big aquaculture
Willapa Bay is part of a
statewide aquaculture industry
valued at $232 million by the
U.S. Department of Agricul-
ture in 2013, $143 million of it
from mollusks spread between
129 farms.
The oyster industry dates
back to the mid-19th century,
when farmers in Willapa Bay
were supplying gold miners
in California. Unlike Oregon,
Washington state allowed pri-
vate citizens to own tidelands.
The Bush and Callow acts in
1895 allowed the sale of state
lands to private citizens to sup-
port the burgeoning oyster
industry.
Fed with freshwater from
nearly a dozen rivers and
Àushed twice daily by the tides,
the bay includes 45,000 acres
of tidelands, about 25,000
of them owned or leased for
commercial shell¿sh aquacul-
ture and 9,000 being actively
farmed, according to the Wil-
lapa-Grays Harbor Oyster
Growers Association.
³They de¿nitely see them-
selves as more associated with
agriculture,” said David Beu-
gli, a project coordinator with
the association.
Beugli said the mem-
bership of the association
employs about 500 people in
Washington¶s 3aci¿c County.
Operations range from small
family farms like the Shot-
wells’, which employ a few
people and their two sons
when they’re on break from
college and processes oys-
Elkhorn Oyster Co. co-owner Andi Shotwell works along-
side Kelli Erickson counting oysters from a cage by the
dozen into mesh bags for wholesale distribution.
Steve Shotwell, co-owner of Elkhorn Oyster Co., uses a forklift to take hundreds of
pounds of Willapa Bay oysters in for separating, cleaning and counting in the small pro-
cessing room next to his home on Washington’s North Nema River.
ters right next to their home,
to large companies like 3aci¿c
Seafood.
Similar to their land-
locked brethren, oyster farm-
ers buy seed from local hatch-
eries, using old oyster shells as
cultch, a surface on which oys-
ter larvae can attach. Elkhorn
uses both bottom-culturing,
spreading the shells through-
out their oyster beds, and
off-bottom-culturing, string-
ing the shells along lines in the
beds.
The Shotwells own more
than 100 acres of tideland,
actively harvesting from about
half of them, seeding on other
plots and carefully schedul-
ing plantings and harvests to
ensure a constant supply of
oysters.
“You’re talking about a
three-year rotation,” Andi
Shotwell said, noting smalls
can take as little as 18 months
to mature, and mediums as
long as three or four years.
Elkhorn tries to plant about
15 acres a year to keep going,
she said, and can ship out as
much as 3,000 to 4,000 pounds
in a week. They count oys-
ters by the dozen, a more suit-
able measurement for restau-
rants and oysters that vary in
size and weight. Steve Shot-
well estimated Elkhorn sends
out about 2,000 dozen oysters
a week.
Life on the tides
On Friday, the Shotwells,
Ritchey and Kelli Erick-
son were processing the 800
pounds — or 220 dozen —
of small and medium oysters
brought in Thursday, breaking
clusters of shells with a dry-
wall hammer, packing them
into mesh bags of ¿ve dozen.
“It’s about 36 hours max
from harvesting to trucking,”
Andi Shotwell said. “They’re
refrigerated throughout the
process.”
Willapa Bay is the source
of at least a sixth of
the oysters consumed
nationally.
A refrigerated truck from
Sorenson Transportation Co.
makes the rounds twice a
week, collecting oysters and
shipping them in-shell to Che-
halis; from there they go to
wholesale accounts in Seattle
and San Francisco. The oys-
ters can be tracked from any-
where back to Elkhorn, which
sometimes receives calls from
restaurants in New York,
Miami and Nova Scotia.
“We’ve had buyers come
out,” Andi Shotwell said.
“They don’t realize the amount
of work that goes into it.”
An environmental stud-
ies major, Steve Shotwell met
Andi, a marine biology major,
at Western Washington Univer-
sity. The two, fresh out of col-
lege, took jobs with Intertidal
Resources Inc., a small oyster
company in Bay Center, before
buying it out in 1995 and form-
ing Elkhorn Oyster Co.
“Everything we do is based
on the tide,” Steve Shotwell
said. “We’ve raised two kids
and everything by that factor.”
Sometimes they take the
abundance of oysters for
granted, he said, “but when
someone from out of town
comes in and asks about fresh
oysters, you know what you
have is special.”
Lawyer: Motion hearing for Roden scheduled for next month
Continued from Page 1A
The defense also claims
the investigation went out of
its way to paint a picture of
Roden’s girlfriend, Dorothy
Ann Wing, as a largely inno-
cent victim.
Wing, 26, pleaded guilty in
-anuary to ¿rst-degree man-
slaughter and two counts of
¿rst-degree criminal mistreat-
ment. She will be sentenced to
more than 15 years in prison,
but only after she truthfully tes-
ti¿es at Roden’s trial, accord-
ing to the plea agreement.
“It is clear that Detec-
tive Goodding is determined
to build a case against Randy
Roden no matter how much
evidence he has to ignore,
distort, or mischaracterize,”
Huseby wrote.
Goodding lawsuit
At trial, Huseby plans to
bring up a $7.5 million lawsuit
against the city of Seaside and
Oregon Department of Human
Services that claims depart-
ment caseworkers and Good-
ding were negligent with pre-
vious reports of abuse leading
to a 2-year-old boy’s death in
March 2014.
The lawsuit claims Good-
ding failed to report child
abuse as required under the
state’s mandatory report-
‘Detective Goodding’s
extreme focus on Randy
Roden is obvious and
baffling.’
Conor Huseby
defense attorney for Randy Lee Roden, the live-in boyfriend accused
of torturing and murdering his girlfriend’s 2-year-old daughter
ing statute and made false
statements in a police report
regarding the child, who was
later murdered in Portland.
“Detective
Goodding’s
extreme focus on Randy
Roden is obvious and baf-
Àing,” Huseby wrote. “How-
ever, a pending wrongful death
lawsuit in which Goodding is
named provides some insight
into what motivates Good-
ding’s tunnel vision and bias.”
Clatsop County Chief Dep-
uty District Attorney Ron
Brown ¿led a written objection
to Huseby using the lawsuit
in court. Brown said the evi-
dence of the lawsuit is irrele-
vant, prejudicial and improper
character evidence. The law-
suit itself is hearsay, he said.
Roden, 28, is accused of
abusing Wing’s daughter,
Evangelina Marie Wing, mul-
tiple times between Oct. 31
to Dec. 20, 2014. An autopsy
found the toddler was the vic-
tim of homicide and apparently
died from blunt-force trauma.
He was indicted on 15 charges
related to the girl’s murder and
the abuse of her two brothers.
The charges accuse him of
the intentional maiming or tor-
ture of the toddler and having a
pattern and practice of assault.
He is facing the potential of the
death penalty.
Roden is already serving
a 100-month prison sentence
for a probation violation from
a previous domestic violence
conviction. He violated his
probation by possessing mari-
juana, oxycodone, and metha-
done and failing to report that
he moved in with Wing. The
drugs were discovered during
a search warrant of the cou-
ple’s Seaside residence Dec.
20, 2014, the day the toddler
was found dead.
A motion hearing for Roden
is scheduled next month in
Clatsop County Circuit Court.
Ban: ‘I understand that some
of my goals were unrealistic’
Continued from Page 1A
Lawmakers in several
states, including California,
have proposed alternatives to
daylight saving changes or
asked that voters decide on
whether to keep the practice.
“What I would really
like to see the country say
is enough is enough and end
daylight saving nationally,”
Miles said.
He said if more states opt
to abolish the practice, there
may be more momentum for
a national change.
Oregon Sen. Kim Thatcher,
R-Keizer, introduced a bill in
January 2015 that would have
let voters to decide whether
to abolish daylight saving in
2021.
Dozens of Oregonians tes-
ti¿ed in favor of the measure.
The legislation stalled in
the Senate Rules Commit-
tee because some lawmakers
were concerned about being
out of sync with Washington
and California, according to
Thatcher’s of¿ce.
The country had an on-and-
off-again relationship with
daylight saving time until
1966 when Congress codi-
¿ed it to try to simplify a con-
fusing patchwork of different
time zones across the coun-
try. Individual states were
allowed to opt out. Arizona,
Hawaii and some U.S. territo-
ries have chosen to remain on
standard time.
The No More Daylight
Saving Time in Oregon ini-
tiative was the ¿rst that Miles
sponsored.
“I’m not upset it didn’t get
on the ballot,” he said. “I learned
a lot. I understand that some of
my goals were unrealistic. It’ll
give me more of an ability to be
successful next time.”
In the meantime, he main-
tains a Facebook page where
he’ll give supporters updates
on the effort: www.facebook.
com/nomoredstinoregon
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