Skift Take
Tourism and handshake relationships with local restaurant buyers are more important than ever for Cape Cod oyster farmers, who run high risk businesses.
A skinny, salty oyster farmer is crouched down on one knee on a floating dock, reaching elbow deep into a bucket of fresh spawn. He pulls up a briny heap, gleaming in the sun, which seems to fill him with excitement.
“Just the viability and consistency of these oysters is some of the best I’ve ever seen,” he says, before giving me a handful. “Ah!” I squeal. “They want to stick to my hand. They’re alive."
Keeping them alive is this man’s entire modus operandi. He is Stephen Wright, General Manager of Chatham Shellfish Company, the exclusive grower of Chatham oysters since 1976.
For him, and the 287 other farmers with private aquaculture licenses in Massachusetts, the task is to nurse spawn from thumbnail-sized crustaceans to viable 2.5-inch, adult oysters destined for your plate. It’s a difficult business, given that at least 50 percent of the spawn will die before reaching adulthood. If they make it, the market is robust. In Cape Cod alone, aquaculture (the practice of fish and shellfish farming) is a $12.5 million industry, according to the state’s Division of Marine Fisheries.
In the Cape, having a monopoly on an entire town’s farmed oyster supply gives you rock star status. And, I think Wright enjoys it. For starters, he’s spending this sunny Sunday with his buddy (and buyer) chef Anthony Cole, another bigwig on the Cape who has held the position of executive chef at the five-star resort, Chatham Bars Inn, for the past 12 years.
Wright's farm is a three-acre embayment stocked with floating trays, racks, bags, and cages — all brimming with thousands of oysters, a fraction of which are ready to be harvested. It
