A shellfish company gets into the weeds
THE LIGHT OF the October full moon bounced across the surface of Washington’s Similk Bay. Stuart Thomas stood ankle-deep in the ebbing tide, flipping black mesh bags filled with oysters.
He opened a bag and pulled out a handful of small ones, barely an inch across, shucking them quickly in the light of his headlamp. “These are Olympia oysters,” said Thomas, cheerful despite the midnight hour. The only oysters native to the state, they’re finally making a comeback after being driven nearly to extinction more than a century ago by overharvesting, habitat destruction and a commercial preference for introduced species, such as the Pacific oyster.
The flesh inside the Olympia’s shell is only the size of a quarter. It tastes sharp, briny and faintly of stone, more ancient, somehow, than
