The Humble Oyster

Reeling after oil spills, freshwater infiltration, a pandemic, and hurricane season, the oyster industry remains resilient

by

Pulling into a muddy boat launch on a cold January morning, I looked out across the calm waters to a small island about a quarter mile offshore. Jutting out of the murky Caminada Bay are white poles that mark the floating oyster cages owned by Scott Maurer of Louisiana Oyster Company. I stepped around twisted and broken equipment, my boots crunching against the oyster shells scattered in every direction.

“This is still the fallout,” Maurer told me as he scanned the gear. “You can still see the tangle of stuff. It’s everywhere. There might be a thousand oyster cages here.”

Seven hurricanes. Five evacuations. A global pandemic. What Maurer had hoped would be a break-out year for his oyster business ended up being more of a break down. Hurricane Zeta, the sixth storm to make landfall in Louisiana in 2020, came right up through the oyster farms of Grand Isle and swept many of them out to sea. “I’m not naive. You know as an oyster farmer in the Gulf that it’s going to happen at some point,” Maurer told me. “But what made this so heartbreaking is that it all happened on top of the pandemic.”

Before March of 2020, one hundred percent of Maurer’s oyster sales were wholesale: from the water, to the distributers and the chefs, and finally the customer’s plate. In that order. “When COVID hit, and all of the restaurants started shutting down, it changed the game completely. And of course, it happened to coincide with a time on the farm where I had an abundance of oysters ready to be harvested.”

As statewide mandates swept across cities in an effort to curve the spread of the virus, restaurants were forced to shutter or drastically reduce occupancy. This left Maurer, and the entire oyster industry, in a serious predicament. What do you do when you have millions of oysters ready to be pulled from the water, sorted, washed, packed, and delivered, and a shortage of restaurants to deliver them to? 

For Maurer a solution came in the form of a very unexpected oyster dish: pizza. “I met chefs Michael and Christopher Ball through a surf club in Grand Isle. They were just starting a pizza pop-up in New Orleans called Yin Yang Pie. We went out on the farm, harvested some oysters, and in a stroke of genius they came up with the char-grilled oyster pizza. They brought it back to their pop-up at Zony Mash Brewery, and it just exploded from there. It was so popular they started inviting me to shuck oysters with them.”

And that’s how Maurer survived: shucking oysters on street corners, at breweries, pop-up markets, and even backyards. “It was the one bright spot in all of this. Getting to see the customers enjoy my oysters. To put a freshly shucked one right into someone’s hand and see them eat it. They get wide-eyed,” Maurer said. “And when they finish, they always say it is one of the best oysters they have ever eaten.”

When the time came for chefs to cautiously re-open their doors, Maurer was ready. He started fronting oysters to restaurants who were afraid they wouldn’t be able stay open through the end of the month due to confusing and constantly changing guidelines. “These chefs were struggling to find a foothold, and I had a great product to get people in the door.” Maurer said. “A lot of positive came out of this symbiotic relationship formed between us. These chefs are always the ones who step up and help the community. I didn’t want to ask them for help, because I knew they were hurting too. We had to find a way to help each other.”

It was a gamble, but with storms brewing in the Gulf, Maurer had no choice but to harvest as many oysters as he could anyway. 

Newly opened boutique oyster spots like Side Car, and the wildly innovative Japanese restaurant Yo Nashi put Maurer’s oysters on their menus. He started making the drive north to the Big Easy multiple times a week to drop off oysters to the restaurants, shuck at brew-eries, and make home deliveries. These home deliveries—facilitated through social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram—were a phenomenal shift in the business model for farmers across the industry. As restrictions began to ease, things were starting to look up for the oyster business and the restaurants.

That is, until late October of 2020, when Hurricane Zeta slammed into the Gulf Coast with sustained winds of one hundred miles per hour, flooding roads in and out of Grand Isle and making it nearly impossible for Maurer—who evacuated for the storm—to even make the trip back to check on the fate of his farm.

[Read this: Murder Point Oysters—Sweet, Southern, and not at all Scary.]

Nathan Herring of Brightside Oysters, which shares the same waters as Maurer’s farm, was the first to make it back. “It was really bad,” Herring said, fighting back emotions that were still raw. “It was unrecognizable.” Most of the equipment and oyster cages were lost, and what was recovered was found miles away from the farm during helicopter flyovers. The anchors that held down the lines were twisted and mangled by the force of the storm. The ropes snapped, sending the gear and the oysters to an uncertain and possibly irretrievable fate.

Herring’s family and friends made the drive down to Grand Isle to help with the clean-up efforts. “We just dove right in,” Herring recalled. “As long as the oysters stayed in the water, they were still alive. We managed to salvage enough of them that I could keep selling and make some money to help repair the damaged equipment.” While the recovered oysters put a dent in the repairs, Herring has  had to tak on another full-time job to support himself and save money to rebuild his farm. 

Maurer and Herring’s experiences are not isolated. Hurricanes continue to pose a serious and repeated threat to the industry as a whole. Aside from the structural damage we can see, much of the harm is invisible to the naked eye. Hurricanes drastically alter reef structures where oysters breed, and changes in water salinity can wipe out entire ecosystems. Such threats from Mother Nature combine with that of human interference in the ecosystem. Nearly eleven years later, Louisiana’s oyster population is still recovering from the effects of the 2010 B.P. oil spill, and suffering repeated assaults by the fact that the Bonnet Carré Spillway has been opened a record-shattering four times over the course of the last three years, flushing oyster farms with dangerous runoff from the Mississippi River again and again. 

“I’ve never met an atheist fisherman,” Maurer laughed. “I don’t care what your beliefs are. We have all been scared enough at some point to pray out to someone or something. And if you haven’t yet, you will.”

"A good oyster is like kissing the ocean on the mouth. That's what they are: a snap shot of what is going on in the ocean at the time that it is harvested. Once it closes its shell, the shutter drops. It is a delicious picture of what is going on in the environment at that moment."

On top of the storm damage caused by Hurricane Zeta at his farm, Maurer also lost his home. “One of the guys that stayed texted me when they were in the eye wall, saying he was looking at my house and everything was good. Then, the winds came back from the opposite direction and my phone rang, and he said he spoke too soon.”

“I didn’t focus on my life to start with,” said Maurer. “I just focused on selling as many oysters as I could to get as much gear off the farm to begin repairs.” He couch surfed for weeks, and even slept in an old shipping container filled with his broken gear. “Through it all, I just kept working non-stop. You wake up at dawn and go out on the boat and work on the farm until night. Come back and answer phone calls and emails and design logos and make posts on social media until you just pass out. Then you sleep a few hours and do it all again.”

[Read this: Red River Oysters—Experiencing history through the cuisine of an era.]

When I asked him if he is optimistic for 2021, he smiled: “To a fault. I do this so I can be happy making a living on the water. I can always catch something to eat, and I eat well. I love this lifestyle. And if I make money doing it? Great. If not? I’m still going to be happy living on an island.”

Optimistic he may be, but Maurer knows what he is up against. Referencing the iconic black and white photographs from the heyday of oyster harvests in Louisiana, which depict giant oyster boats loaded down with mountains of shells, he said: “You know why those photos are in black and white? Because it’s been that long since there have been that many wild oysters out there to harvest.”

When one participates in the ritula of sitting down to a freshly shucked Gulf dozen and a cold beer, it’s no doubt that this industry is vital to our local culture. It’s also a major contributor to the country at large, which receives 35–45% percent of its oysters from Louisiana waters. A nutritional and low calorie source of protein, vitamins, and minerals, and delicious as they are, oys-ters are more than a culinary delight. They are a source of jobs as well. They are a living coastline, a three-dimensional structure that creates a home for juvenile fish and crabs. They are a sustainable food source. And they create an important buffer against future storm surges.

[Read this: How to Shuck An Oyster, From the Experts.]

“Before I started doing this I never believed so much good could come from a humble oyster,” Maurer said. “The caveat is that they also taste great. A good oyster is like kissing the ocean on the mouth. That’s what they are: a snap shot of what is going on in the ocean at the time that it is harvested. Once it closes its shell, the shutter drops. It is a delicious picture of what is going on in the environment at that moment. If you time it just right, at the peak of an incoming tide, you can really taste that fresh, crisp ocean flavor.” 

Both Maurer and Herring are rebuilding their farms, and will soon be seeding new crops of oysters. If you would like to support their efforts, check out their websites: louisianaoysters.com and brightsideoysters.com.

You can also help Herring to rebuild his farm by contributing to his Go Fund Me.