The Oyster is My World: Part 2

Written by Tod Stewart | 11 February 2010

Here it is... Part 2 of Tod Stewart's All About Oysters video and the rest of The World Is My Oyster article. Tidings offers you the proverbial "everything you ever wanted to know about oysters but were afraid to ask!" If you caught Tod's video yesterday, you're now an expert at choosing the best oysters for your dining pleasure. You're also an expert on why those little mollusks are great aphrodisiacs. If you missed it, you're in luck. Just click on The World is My Oyster: Part 1 below.

Today, Tod shows us how to shuck, serve and eat oysters, and how to choose a great wine to pair with them.

The pick of the ’peque
“Malpeque oysters were judged the world’s tastiest oysters at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900, he informs me. “They continue to be recognized as one of the world’s finest, known for a clean, sharp taste. They are grown in a lot of bays and estuaries around the island, and they have a very good shelf life compared to other oysters around the world. These oysters are the livelihood of over 700 wild fishers and more than 1,000 aquaculture sites here on PEI.”

Once a “wild” fisher, George switched to aquaculture through economic necessity. “In the wild fishery, stocks have been on a downturn for a good few years for reasons from the DFO’s [Department of Fisheries and Oceans] mismanagement to farm runoff killing shellfish through high nitrate levels. So in order to sustain a level income — and not what you call a big income — we started into aquaculture.”

Establishing an aquaculture operation takes a bit of doing, from finding the ideal site to procuring the right “seed.”

“There are basically two ways to get set up,” Dowdle explains. “You can buy out an existing established site — price would depend on a number of factors, of course. The second is to find an area that satisfies the requirements needed for a good bed. Then you must apply to the DFO to lease that area. Provided your application meets all their requirements, you have the area for a period of twenty-five years. Then it’s all about buying seed or collecting your own seed product “under licence” to start you off.

“One must have a few considerations when establishing a new bed. One, for sure, is water flow in terms of a food source. Another would be water depth and method of cultivation being considered. The area should be low in biofouling and nuisance species. Most important is an area that is not prone to runoff from farms or agricultural spray. Along with a few more factors, those would influence the decision as where to start a bed.”

Dowdle notes that one needs to keep an open eye for starfish and crabs that seem to enjoy oysters about as much as people do.

When asked what makes for a “good year” in the oyster biz, wine analogies return. “I think that it is the same as the wine industry,” he muses. “If you get all things working with you and the right amount of this and that, and the market demand is strong, then it’s a good year.”