I`ve been working on understanding oyster declines and the potential for restoration in CK with Bill, Jenn, and Leslie during the last two years. I`ve also been harvesting oysters for my own family up and down the coast for about 25 years. I can confirm that this year we had excellent response of oysters at our sampling stations, indicating something caused very good survival and growth of oysters during the summer. This was true at virtually all sites from Horseshoe Beach to Wacasassa Bay. The flavor is strongly influenced by where and when the oysters are harvested.
Large cup shaped oysters are available now just off the Suwannee River - but these oysters are not salty at all, and taste quite bland and lay kind of flat in the shell. Those from further south around Corrigan`s reef and towards Wacasassa are generally smaller, at the moment quite salty, and have a sweet, nutty flavor that is extremely appealing. As Leslie says, those oysters the writer sampled might not even have been from Cedar Key at all. Recall that a tsar of Russia once specified that his oysters had to come from Cedar Key - they have been truly great for some time and still are. I happened to have been at a party over Christmas where I sampled three of the most desirable gourmet farm-grown oysters in the country - "named" oysters from Prince Edward Island, Long Island, and Puget Sound. Shortly before, I also was at an oyster roast in South Carolina, eating oysters from the famed May River. While they were all tasty and amazingly different, none in my mind came up to the Corrigan`s oysters I ate in early December. To our writer, I would say "please try again" - and try to find someone with genuine Cedar Key shellfish. On the subject of price - the price of oysters has remained flat for several decades - to the point that unless there are extremely dense beds, its often hardly worth the harvesting. Selling oysters at $9 - 15/bushel has been the norm for a long time. They are now around $35/bushel locally, retail, in Cedar Key - which is beginning to approach a price at which it is actually worthwhile for someone to be out there in bad weather with a pair of tongs all day. Checking a couple of mid range seafood restaurants in Florida, it looks like a half dozen oysters are still less than most other appetizers including soup, jalapeno sticks, and any other shellfish.
Peter Frederick
Research Professor |
