“Why then the world’s mine oyster, which I with sword will open.” Thus, Shakespeare gave us a new idiom in the Merry Wives of Windsor repeated ever since, and Oscar Wilde wielded it with customary wit: “The world was my oyster, but I took the wrong fork.”
It means a person expects to avoid adversity and find opportunity, like the discovery of a precious pearl. But if you asked an oyster it wouldn’t sound optimistic. Our excessive love kills them, and few cared about the relentless harvest until recently. In the poem recited by Tweedledee and Tweedledum, Alice felt sorry for oysters as the Walrus and Carpenter gobbled them on the beach.
Had we been aboard the shallop steered by the first English explorers of the Chesapeake Bay in Shakespeare’s day we would have been gobsmacked by an abundance of oysters, some as large as dinner plates and forming reefs grown close to the surface. In 1701, a foreign visitor wrote in astonishment: “whole banks … ships must avoid them … four times as large (as English oysters) … I often cut them in two to put them in my mouth.”
The Bay was drastically impoverished by dredging its bed barren in the 19th century Oyster Rush. The local economy collapsed and watermen switched to crabbing to make a living. The crash drastically impacted other fauna and flora since the remaining 2% of original numbers now took a year to filter the entire Bay which used to be achieved in a week. It is a classic example of the folly of free-for-all harvesting of a seemingly inexhaustible natural resource. Oyster beds are now making a slow recovery against a tide of agricultural effluent and disease, but helped by volunteers for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and less harvesting pressure as oysters are cultured commercially.
If they are on your menu today, imagine the same shells on your plate again. The suggestion is ridiculous, but the point is that some restaurants in our region recycle shells for building wild oyster beds and embedding in artificial reefs. At one time, they were used as lime for mortar and roads, but when that became redundant they were dumped in landfills, so the recycling program is positive in every way.
Shells are trucked to a depot in Maryland or the Virginia Institute of Marine Science beside the York River. A volunteer tips them on a hopper for conveyance through a tumble washer and bagging to cure in the sun for a year, eliminating the last traces of condiments from your meal. The happy, hot and sweaty team beside the river is, alas, not reassembling this year because of the coronavirus contagion.
Cured shells are loaded in tanks of brackish water to which larvae (‘spat’) are introduced from external suppliers. The spat can attach to hard surfaces like stone or concrete, but they prefer old shells, like the reefs of old. Young oysters are then dropped in sanctuary areas of the Bay or its creeks and rivers or oyster gardeners raise them for a year in cages where they grow faster and are protected before reaching their final destination. The goal is to deposit 10 billion oysters by 2025, an effort requiring over 21,000 hours of volunteer time.
Not only will future diners and watermen benefit but the whole ecosystem. It is a story of a keystone species. In purifying 50 gallons of water a day, each oyster reduces dissolved nitrogen and phosphorus and, hence, the risk of dead zones from algal blooms. Their colonies provide important habitat for fish and crabs too. The early explorers adopted the Algonquin name for Chesapeake, meaning great shellfish bay, and perhaps one day it will be apt again.