OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JUNE 3, 2016
Matt Winters Collection
An oyster can label, circa, 1895, illustrates the practice of oyster tonging. Oystermen on Shoalwater and San Francisco bays used these hinged tools — something like giant
salad tongs — to pick oysters off the bottom while the tide was in.
SHELLFISH WARS
Lobsters, Shoalies, Olympias, Atlantics and Paciics vie for supremacy
I
f you’ve ever idly wondered why lob-
sters are such a big deal in New England
and Maritime Canada but haven’t gained
a claw-hold at our similar latitude in the
Paciic, you’re not unique — the question
has come up since at least the 1880s.
Among many instances of European-
Americans endeavoring to reconigure the
West Coast’s animals, plants and landforms
to our liking, efforts to establish lobsters
here have to be counted as a failure ... so far.
In 1888 two shipments totaling 565 adult
lobsters and 104,000 fry were planted off the
Paciic coast between Monterey Bay and the
Strait of Juan de Fuca.
“What the result of this will be can be con-
jectured, but cannot be deinitely determined
until after the lapse of suficient time to give
the lobsters an opportu-
nity to grow and multi-
ply,” J.W. Collins told
Congress in his land-
mark “Report on the
Fisheries of the Paciic
Coast of the United
States.”
Already
naturally
providing such a deli-
cious bounty of seafood
options, the natural spir-
Matt
its of the north Paciic
Winters
must have concluded
this attempt was human
hubris of the worst sort, and slapped it down.
But we didn’t give up.
Failed lobster colonies
ccording to the Canadian Encyclopedia,
“from 1896 to 1966 there were at least
11 separate introductions of American lobsters
into British Columbia waters, and even more
along the U.S. West Coast. In Canada, intro-
ductions probably totaled no more than 5,000
adults. Although American lobsters seem able
to survive in the Paciic, there is no evidence
that any of the introductions has resulted in a
reproducing population.”
Since we lack the Gulf Stream — the
north-lowing tropical current that warms the
ocean along the Atlantic seaboard — lobsters
aren’t likely to be as successful here. Their
eggs and fry also face predation by Dungeness
crab and other competitors.
Despite these challenges, it actually isn’t
unheard of to ind lobsters in the Paciic North-
west. In August 2014, a surprised isherman
pulled up a heavily egg-laiden lobster just off
the city of Vancouver. Speculation suggested it
wasn’t a descendant of early introductees, but
more likely the result of a good deed.
“When you have a combination of live sea-
food markets and members of the public who
feel that it’s not fair to the animals, then you
have people buying them to set them free,”
University of British Columbia marine biolo-
gist and professor of zoology Christopher Har-
ley told the Vancouver Sun newspaper.
This January, a different lobster with claws
the size of a man’s size 11 shoes washed up on
a Vancouver beach.
“Those claws are pretty huge,” Harley
told CBC News. “That suggests that if some-
one bought it in a store and released it ... then
it may have been cruising around for quite a
while to grow that big.”
A
Will they ever prosper?
ntroduced species — even valuable ones
like lobsters — have all sorts of side effects,
I
Contributed Photo
Damon Gudaitis Photo
This giant lobster washed up in Vancouver, B.C. in January. For a sense of scale, note
that the men’s shoe in the frame is size 11.
including preying on native wildlife and carry-
ing harmful parasites or pathogens. Although
accidental introductions happen all the time,
oficially sanctioned ones are rare today. (One
local example of an invasive species gone wild
is the sand grain-size New Zealand mud snail.
First discovered in the Columbia River water-
shed in 1997, it has in places now reached con-
centrations of 200 per square inch, wrecking
clam beds.)
Regarding lobsters, UBC’s Harley notes,
“You never know which lobster you add that
becomes the important one” — the one that
becomes the pilgrim of its species, stepping
off Plymouth Rock and conquering everything
in its path.
It becomes increasingly clear that humans
lack the organizational skills and willpower
to avert massive changes in our climate and
oceans in the decades and centuries ahead.
There will be winners and (mostly) losers.
Lobsters on the West Coast could be one of
the winners.
Washington state climatologist Nick Bond
expects local seawater temperatures to climb
to more lobster-friendly levels by around
2040.
Eastern and Japanese oysters
he Paciic Northwest’s enormous shellish
industry, recently valued at $270 million
annually, also is a story of introduced species,
from Paciic oysters to Manila clams.
The Gold Rush of 1849 spurred intense
exploitation of the native oysters of Willapa
Bay, then known as Shoalwater Bay.
“Shoalwater Bay is celebrated on the
Paciic Coast for its oysters, which occur
abundantly there on natural beds. For a num-
ber of year the oyster supply of San Francisco
was obtained solely from this source,” accord-
ing to the federal isheries report of 1888.
When young Mark Twain was a San Fran-
cisco newspaper reporter extolling the virtues
of oysters, it was Washington Territory oysters
he was slurping.
The two principal oystermen in 19th cen-
tury San Francisco, John Stillwell Morgan
and Michael Molan Moraghan, each started
out by bringing sailboats loaded with oysters
T
from Shoalwater, in cooperation with local
partners.
In 1869, soon after the opening of a rail-
road connection with the East, large living
Eastern oysters began arriving in the San Fran-
cisco market. They became more popular than
Shoalwater oysters, or Shoalies, for a couple
decades.
Like lobsters, they found West Coast
waters too chilly to sustain long-term natural
reproduction, either in California or in Wash-
ington. However, adult Eastern oysters and
young ones (called “seed”) imported from the
east survived long enough to reach marketable
size inside both Shoalwater and San Francisco
bays, at least until siltation and other issues
doomed them on this coast by around 1920.
Shoalies make a comeback
n the late 1880s, the novelty of being able
to eat Easterns had fallen off and Shoalies
made a second stand in the Bay Area.
“Receipts from Atlantic coast beds have
decreased and in 1888 only 48 carloads of
‘seed’ and 20 carloads of large oysters were
imported from the East,” according to the fed-
eral isheries report. “This may perhaps be
accounted for by the fact that recently quite
large quantities of native oysters have been
brought from the bays of the state of Wash-
ington (Where they obtain greater excellence
than farther south) and planted in San Fran-
cisco Bay.
“... Many of the older citizens, having
acquired a taste for the native oysters before
any others were obtainable on the West Coast,
prefer them to those brought from the Atlantic.
This preference has created considerable trade
in the native variety.”
Price might also have played a role. In
1888, Atlantic oysters sold for $3.98 a bushel
in San Francisco, compared to Shoalies at
$3.37.
In the 1880s, some Shoalies were said to
grow to half the size of an Atlantic oyster. This
would be gargantuan by modern standards.
One 20th century Washington oysterman esti-
mated it would take 2,500 native oysters to
produce a gallon of meat — they are basically
the escargot of the oyster world.
I
The early Oregon and Washington oys-
ter firm of F.C. Barnes centered its oper-
ations in South Bend, Wash. Like many
oystermen and shellfish consumers at
the time, Barnes made a distinction be-
tween Shoalwater (Willapa) Bay oysters
and those from the same species raised
in south Puget Sound known as Olym-
pias. Shoalwaters were larger and re-
garded as better tasting. This receipt is
for dredging work undertaken on behalf
of the P.J. McGowan & Sons salmon com-
pany, with canneries on Willapa Bay and
the Columbia estuary.
Depletion of native oyster beds in Wash-
ington and a few smaller Oregon bays, along
with the eventual failure of efforts to create
a self-sustaining population of transplanted
Eastern oysters, led to introduction of Japanese
oysters in the Paciic Northwest. Renamed
Paciic oysters in a marketing move, large Jap-
anese oysters form the basis of the West Coast
oyster business to this day. Though the mod-
ern preference is for relatively small oysters,
Paciics became popular with growers in part
because they can grow so large — up to 40
shucked oysters to the gallon.
There are some who argue to this day that
establishing Paciic oysters in the U.S. was an
environmental mistake — though few oys-
ter lovers will agree. There are scattered, but
serious, efforts to reestablish native Northwest
oysters.
In light of contemporary battles over how
to control non-native eelgrass and an explod-
ing population of native burrowing shrimp in
Willapa, it’s also interesting to note deteriorat-
ing conditions for oysters has been an issue for
at least 13 decades or so.
The 1888 isheries report notes, “The trans-
planting of oysters from the natural to the cul-
tivated beds has become necessary because
the bottom of the bay near the natural beds is
rapidly illing up with vegetable growths, and
many areas which were once proitable oyster
grounds are now worthless.”
The human struggle to cope and adapt to
changing habitats is an old story. This century
will present many opportunities to hone those
skills.
— MSW
Matt Winters is editor and publisher of the
Chinook Observer and Coast River Business
Journal.
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