It’s Time to Get Shucking

The team behind Toby Bay Island Oysters, Dr. Daniel Grosse and Kellen Williams, in Chincoteague, VA

Local oyster farmers need support from the local community

By Tim Ebner | Photography by Jennifer Chase | from the Edible DC Fall 2020 Issue

Like many local food producers, oyster farmers have been hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, and right now there’s an easy way to help the Chesapeake Bay and its local aquaculture system: Pick up an oyster knife and get shucking and slurping down some bivalves.

It may sound counterintuitive, but eating oysters that have been sustainably farmed can help protect the bay, which for decades has suffered from pollution, disease and overharvesting of wild oyster populations.

Proactively managed oyster farms are both an economically viable and environmentally responsible way to keep oyster rates growing in the bay, says Kellen Williams, who is a waterman and partner with Toby Island Bay Oyster Farm in Chincoteague, VA.

Since the start of COVID-19, farmers like Williams are up against several challenges to keep their businesses going. Before the pandemic, local oyster farmers depended on a robust restaurant distribution system to keep their industry afloat. Now, many farmers are selling directly to consumers, which also means they’re teaching customers how to shuck oysters from home. Williams is using Zoom to facilitate DIY virtual shucking lessons, leading viewers through the steps that will yield the salty delicacy.

For an industry that represents more than $20 million in sales annually in Virginia alone, there are still many disruptive forces that Williams says may alter the industry’s growth direction, which had been steadily increasing at 15% per year and represents hundreds of farmers, according to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s “State of the Bay” Report.

To learn more about what local oyster farmers are up against during the pandemic, Edible DC contributor Tim Ebner sat down with Williams to discuss some of the biggest challenges.

EDIBLE DC: How long have you been an oyster farmer? And what’s been one of the biggest changes for Toby Island Bay Oyster Farm as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic?

KELLEN WILLIAMS: I have been farming for about seven years now. We sell a lot of our oysters at local farmers markets, like Chevy Chase and in The Palisades, as well as Silver Spring FRESHFARM and Bethesda Central Farm Markets. These have been great partnerships for a while, and we had to alter our schedule at these markets at the start of COVID-19.

Pretty much everything has changed for our industry now, but I think the biggest change was that customer, face-to-face interaction. Connecting with people around oysters is my favorite thing about this job. You can teach a person how to shuck, or possibly serve someone their first oyster, or talk about the unique briny flavors of our Chincoteague Oysters and what they do for the biodiversity of the Bay. These are moments that are not directly business-related, but they help to build customer relationships and loyalty. At one point, we saw farmers markets completely shut down, and we’re still seeing some of the lingering effects.

EDC: How are you dealing with the impacts on your business? Are you keeping oysters growing in cages for longer now?

KW: It’s a bit of a juggling act. In the summer, oysters grow at just an incredible speed. They grow at about a quarter of a millimeter per day. My whole job is to keep them from growing too fast, so they don’t suffocate each other. That means you have to pull some cages at a certain point, and some farmers are throwing excess supplies back into the bay because the demand for harvested oysters just simply isn’t there. That’s actually a good problem. Oysters are a living thing and part of a broader ecosystem and it’s self-sustaining.

If you leave them in the cage for a few extra months or throw them back into the water, they’re not going to die on you. However, we work on very small margins to sustainably farm oysters, and so any hit to our consumer demand is obviously going to impact farmers and our ability to get this aquaculture system growing.

EDC: How are you dealing with supply-and-demand issues related to COVID-19?

KW: You’re never going to meet a tougher, more industrious group of people than oyster farmers. We are right now looking at new ways to get oysters to people’s plates. We also have extremely outdated [government] farm policies and farm supports that heavily favor industrialized farmers—not to mention the fact that many oyster farmers come from historically disenfranchised communities.

So, a lack of demand for oysters really hits our already-thin operating margins. And remember that many farmers are new to this industry too, in the last few years or so. So, we need support from lawmakers and better policies to keep our industry growing strong. But we also need customers to support us, now more than ever.

We’re trying to approach the COVID-19 demand issues by pivoting to technology. I’ve started doing Zoom classes with customers to teach them how to shuck an oyster. That’s a new thing we’re doing to create a virtual customer relationship. And we’re trying to maintain our sales by selling direct to consumers. This fall we’re trying to scale up our online order and delivery system. I can’t wait to do that because I think it’s a whole new level of interaction with the people who are eating our oysters.

EDC: Describe what your oysters taste like and why they’re unique.

KW: Chincoteague oysters are historically a very briny oyster. They come from a complex ecosystem on the Delmarva Peninsula, which means a farm 100 yards away could raise the same oysters with an entirely different flavor profile. Ours are brine-flavored upfront with a nice sweet and subtle umami flavor at the midpoint, and an easy finish.

EDC: Do you think oyster farmers will come away stronger than before as a result of the pandemic?

KW: I do. I think our industry and our product—oysters—are extremely adaptable. Hopefully, farmers are trying to be more engaging with their customers, developing that relationship a bit more, and selling to broader markets and regions than ever before. I have learned a lot in this industry, and I’ve seen how it has grown to help improve the quality and ecosystem of the bay. I don’t see our momentum stopping any time soon, and I would strongly encourage folks to consider buying oysters sometime soon.