The Oyster War: The True Story of a Small Farm, Big Politics, and the Future of Wilderness in America
256
The Oyster War: The True Story of a Small Farm, Big Politics, and the Future of Wilderness in America
256eBook
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Overview
Environmentalists, national politicians, scientists, and the Department of the Interior all joined a protracted battle for the estuary that had the power to influence the future of wilderness for decades to come. Were the oyster farmers environmental criminals, or victims of government fraud? Fought against a backdrop of fear of government corruption and the looming specter of climate change, the battle struck a national nerve, pitting nature against agriculture and science against politics, as it sought to determine who belonged and who didn't belong, and what it means to be wild.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781619026483 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Catapult |
| Publication date: | 08/01/2015 |
| Sold by: | Penguin Random House Publisher Services |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| Sales rank: | 330,667 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
THE OYSTER FARM
The road to the oyster farm is paved with the moon-white grit of pulverized oyster shells. There is a gleam to it, and to drive it in the dusk of the dry summer months is to see the dust-coated leaves of the ditch plants take on the powdery luminosity of white moths.
Hugging the edge of the estuary's northernmost inlet, the narrow lane rises a little above a lush wetland dotted with egrets and blue herons, and then winds down again to the edge of a vast and shining body of water. This is Drakes Estero, what's been called "the heart of the park." The air feels different here. In winter or summer, heat or cold, there is an enlivening bite of freshness.
I was at the farm one evening in the late summer of 2013 to look for Oscar, one of the farm's workers. He had given me an unauthorized tour of the planting sites the month before, and I was worried that allowing him to do so had accidentally gotten him fired. Word on the street was that it had. I was initially shocked to hear this, but considering how contentious things had gotten, what with the legal battle and all the national media attention, I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised at all. For owners Kevin and Nancy Lunny, who by some estimates had already sunk more than a million dollars into their efforts to restore the farm and keep it open, the stakes could not have been higher.
Like many of the oyster workers, Oscar lived in one of the rundown buildings that made up the farm's small land-based component — a smattering of sheds, cottages, trailers and pre-fab homes. At least that is what he told me, though I didn't know if he still lived there. The buildings were scattered over just about an acre and a half, so I figured it wouldn't take too long to look.
I pulled up and parked my borrowed, mud-splattered 1991 Toyota station wagon in front of a weatherworn white building. A brightly painted sign exclaimed it to be the OYSTER SHACK. No more than six hundred square feet in total, it housed the retail portion of the business in front and the tiny hatchery in back, where the oysters were grown from spat (or "seed") the size of sand grains. On the wall of an adjacent shed was pinned a large American flag.
The pop radio station I'd been listening to on the drive out had turned to white noise. I switched it off and got out of the car.
Outside, sagging on two legs, was an old lopsided National Park Service sign that was so weather-beaten it looked abandoned. Completely unreadable in places, I could nevertheless make out one of the blocks of text. It read:
The tidal waters of Drakes Estero nurture a shellfish highly prized by local seafood lovers — the Drakes Bay Oyster. The oysters are grown and harvested here by Johnson Oyster Company under a special agreement with the California Department of Fish and Game and the National Park Service.
Yes, I thought, shaking my head. But maybe not for long.
I read on:
The oysters grow on wire "strings" hanging from wooden platforms. Here they receive nutrients carried in by the tide and are protected from starfish, crabs, stingrays and other enemies that lurk on the bottom. When the oysters are mature, oystermen collect them here for shucking, canning and marketing.
Looking around, I thought: But where is my oysterman?
Though the description of the farm's activities still fit, this wasn't the Johnson Oyster Company anymore. In early 2005 the Lunnys, a cattle ranching family from a half mile down the road, took over. Since then it had been the Drakes Bay Oyster Company — the infamous Drakes Bay Oyster Company, if you will, whose plight has garnered national media attention. Its opposing sides had brought together strange bedfellows, from anti-government militia groups to locavore celebrity chefs, and its fate had been debated heavily and contentiously across the country. Was the company causing environmental harm? Or had it been framed, the victim of government fraud? Why this sign hadn't been updated to reflect the change in ownership that took place nearly a decade prior will take the length of this book to tell.
The retail store was closed for the day, and the dock area was empty and quiet. The only sounds were the low whir of some unseen machinery and a static-y radio softly playing Mexican dance music. All were muffled by the blanket of fog that had already started rolling in. Surely this tiny, dilapidated enterprise couldn't be the big, bad "industrial" entity described by its detractors? That monster of privatization, befouling a pristine natural treasure that should be left alone for the benefit of all? Even though I'd been out to the farm many times before, I still couldn't help but ask myself, Is this really it? Is this all?
Covered in mud, oyster shells, bird droppings and bits of dried and wet seaweed, the waterside operations area could almost pass for something as long-abandoned as the outdated Johnson Oyster Company sign itself. Sand and shell grit escaped up from between the rotting wooden planks of the dock that sat under the rickety conveyer belt. Its concrete blocks were green with aquatic growth. The ground was slick in places with eelgrass that would be underwater again in just a few hours when the tide swelled. Off to the right was a half-sheltered wooden structure, bleached the pale gray of old driftwood, where the mature oysters were taken off of their hanging strings. There were overflowing crates of the black plastic spacers used to keep the oysters apart on the wires. Two small skiffs, one wooden and one fiberglass, were moored alongside a barge, or flatboat, not much bigger than the roof of a Volkswagen van. To the left, between the Oyster Shack and the shell-paved picnic area, stood open vats of aerated brackish water where the young oysters were grown until they were strong enough to be planted out in the deeper water. In the estuary itself, rods spackled with tiny growing oysterlings rocked gently in the lapping shallows. The empty picnic tables had white plastic cutting boards chained to the center for tourists to do their shucking. Now, the only visitors to brave the thickening evening fog were seagulls, searching the tables and ground for forgotten bits of food. They strutted along the low cliffs that stood above the six-foot mounds of discarded shells, and piles of stiff, black mesh planting bags tied together five or six at a time by lengths of yellow rope. Near the picnic tables, the blue plastic drums used as trash cans were decorated with the silvery paw prints of raccoons — the evidence of their nighttime theft left in oyster dust.
Deserted like this, the place seemed so ramshackle as to appear in danger of being reabsorbed by the landscape. I walked back towards the Oyster Shack, kicking shells as I went. They left white streaks on my black shoes. There were rusting tools left haphazardly on the ground, and a wall of blue and black crates stacked against a shed. In the gray light, the farm itself was not particularly charming to look at, though it had a kind of stark, honest beauty. Because though tourists came here — thousands every year — the farm was not a contrived tourist attraction. It was a real place where men and women worked, hauling bag after bag of the precious bivalves from the pristine estuary during every month of the year.
I had met Oscar late one morning, just before lunchtime, on a rare bright coastal day without even a lick of fog. I called Ginny — one of the Lunny siblings — about getting an official tour of the oyster farm and decided to drop by to see if she was available. As I drove up, I saw a man in a wetsuit running across the inlet of mudflats with a blue and white cooler carried on his shoulders. He left a trail of deep tracks behind him. On the far end, two more figures in wetsuits crouched beside a small cluster of triangular red flags. When he reached them, the man set the cooler down, jumped into a waist-deep trough of water and began to wrestle with something. There was shouting, but I couldn't make out what was being said.
"Do you know what's happening?" a man asked me as I got out of my car. He was standing by a minivan with three little girls hanging out of the windows and sliding door, trying to get a glimpse of the action. Beside us, a couple in their forties unloaded colorful plastic kayaks from the roof of their sport utility vehicle.
"I have no idea," I said.
I wondered if the people in wetsuits were doing something with the seals, thinking maybe one was sick or had gotten stuck in the mud or something. Out of curiosity, I asked the kayakers if they knew anything about harbor seals in the estuary, and whether tourists were allowed to paddle out at this time of year.
"Oh I don't know!" the man said. "But it seems okay though, right? I mean, there's no sign."
"There is, actually," I said, noticing it, and drew his attention to a small paper pinned to a bulletin board under glass at the edge of the parking lot gravel. "See, no kayaking here during pupping season. Looks like you're okay, though." The pupping season had just ended in June. The kayaker gave me a look as if to say "whatever."
The man with the cooler came back towards us and showed us his catch. The three little girls, their father and the kayakers all crowded around. Inside the cooler, a leopard shark lay curled, slowly seething in the shallow water. The man, it turned out, was a parasitology post-doc, and his group intended to take the animal back to their lab at UC Santa Barbara for dissection.
"This estuary is just teeming with parasites!" he said excitedly, as if this were a fascinating rather than a disgusting fact.
Not wanting to look too long at the doomed and apparently parasitic leopard shark, I went over to where an older tourist couple stood snapping photos of the activity down by the dock. Point Reyes National Seashore gets all kinds of visitors from a variety of demographics, including an increasing number of, dare I say it, hipsters. (Somehow, between my childhood and my return, it seemed that Point Reyes had become "cool.") These two were regulation issue though: Caucasian, gray hair, visors, fanny packs. They watched as a dozen or more oystermen worked in the sunshine, lively bachata music playing on the radio. All of the workers were Latino. Some hurled bags onto the barge, while others hurled different bags off of it. The rest worked to separate the good oysters from the bad as they traveled down the rusty conveyor belt. One of the men waved hello. I waved hello back, and soon I was chatting with them in my terrible Spanish. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, all smiles in the fresh air and sunshine.
"You want to go with?" one of the men asked me in English, pointing a thumb towards the little wooden boat.
"Of course!" I said. But as I stepped forward he laughed and put his hands up.
"No, no," he said. "No puedo. Sorry."
"It's okay," I said, though I was disappointed. I stood with the tourists and watched the activity for a few minutes, thinking I'd better go find Ginny. Then I heard a whistle. One of the workers closer to the water was motioning for me to approach.
"Hey, mija," he said, "vamanos," and threw me a muddy orange life vest.
I caught it, clasping it against my white shirt, which until a second ago had been clean. I wasn't prepared for something like this. I was wearing my favorite black jeans, not a pair I'd want to get dirty, but I tried not to think about that. He ushered me across a balanced plank that led to the moored motorboat where two men were loading the black mesh bags onto the barge tethered alongside. Both the boat and the barge were old, warped by weather and water away from their original symmetry. One of the men looked quite young; tall and lanky and barely out of high school. The other, who was older and stockier, offered me his outstretched hand and helped me climb aboard.
The younger man wore black trousers, a black knit cap and a black sweatshirt with the hood pulled up. The older man, in jeans, a gray sweatshirt and white baseball cap, had a broad smile and a luxurious dark mustache. Both wore thick gloves and rubber boots that reached to their thighs.
I sat down in the boat and put on my life vest. The raw wood was covered in black mud, streaks of oyster dust, crumbled shells, and smudges of bright green seaweed. Near my leg lay the pale body of a small, crushed crab.
I made my introductions and shook the men's hands. The tall one was named Ignacio, and the shorter one introduced himself as Oscar. The sun felt hot on the top of my head, and too late I remembered that not only did I not have a hat, but I wasn't wearing any sunscreen.
"Okay, bonita," Oscar said to me as he gunned the little engine with a wink. "Hold on."
"Are you sure this is okay?" I asked him as we motored out into the open water. Ignacio crouched on the barge while Oscar navigated. He smiled and squinted, tilting his head from side to side as if to say, Who cares?
"It's just that I don't want to get you in trouble," I said.
"It's okay," he said to me with a twinkle. "I will just say you are my girlfriend."
I was having misgivings about how okay this entire thing really was, but it was too late to turn back now. Six thin wooden posts, about thirty yards apart, pointed our way towards the ocean. Cormorants perched on them with their wings outstretched, drying their feathers in the sun. Gulls floated past, and a small flock of sandpipers swooped by, skimming low to the surface.
Oscar explained to me that we were going out to "plant" the bags of young oysters, which he said were about eight months old. He reached across to the barge and opened one of the bags, fishing out a handful to give to me. The wet, closed shells were only slightly larger than silver dollars. They were pearlescent and matte, pale and dark gray, green and black, smooth and rough.
I like oysters. I like how tasting their wild brininess makes me feel closer to the sea. When in Manhattan, I sometimes like to go to the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station after work. On a cold night, there is nothing more comforting and warming than a piping hot bowl of New England clam chowder, with a dash of Tabasco stirred in. I'll sit at the bar and order oysters à la carte, charmed by their outlandish or lyrical names: Witch Duck and Moonstone, Pearl and Pemaquid, Gooseberry and Shinnecock. The tiny Oregon Kumamotos, bright and tender, which though famous for their fruitiness taste to me the most like a cloudy day at the beach. Their subtle scent of seaweed is simultaneously fresh and pungent. Then there are the thin, fluttery dark-edged Hama Hamas from Washington, not too salty and with a buttery aftertaste. There are the meaty, golden-cast Yaquinas in their broad oval shell-cups, packing a slightly gamy tang. The flavorful, classic Long Island Blue Points are a staple of oyster bars everywhere. There are so many ways to prepare an oyster, but I prefer to eat mine with nothing on them at all, naked, as it's called, the better to taste their quintessential oyster-ness.
Eaten live and whole, and tasting strongly of their specific environment, raw oysters are perhaps the most wild of modern foods. To eat a raw oyster for the first time, one must dare to. What other meat do we consume while it is still living? Though bloodless, they nevertheless carry the sweet metallic taste of animal life. Famously linked to opulence and sex, they were also once considered a protein staple of the seaside-dwelling masses. The working stiff, if you will. Recently rescued from the realms of aphrodisiac cliché, oysters are simultaneously romantic, adventurous and very real. Something about them just feels authentic, a sometimes elusive quality that more and more people are endeavoring to pursue. Part of the oyster's considerable mystique comes from the fact that you can't grow a good oyster artificially. They need the living tides of the wild world.
Drakes Bay oysters, like the ones I held in my hand, were hearty and often quite large, with an almost overpowering creaminess. At least, they have been that way the times that I tasted them. Some chefs I've talked to say they're better cooked than eaten raw, though others would disagree with that. These had another eight months or so to go though, and I handed them back to Oscar to return to the bag.
The forty-horsepower engine wasn't so loud that we couldn't talk over it, but even so, Oscar stopped it from time to time to let us glide, pointing out where the farm kept its wooden racks. These racks were present in a little less than five percent of the estuary. Now, since the tide was in, all of the racks were hidden under the water unless you looked directly down on them. Later, with the tide out, they'd be high enough to walk on without getting your shoes wet.
The sloping land on either side of us was covered in dark green shrubs, with patches of golden summer grass showing in between. Even in this protected cove we could still hear the unseen roar of the surf that pounds violently against the northwestern edge of the peninsula, and the wind blowing over the open heath that lies between this finger of the sprawling waterway and the ocean.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Oyster War"
by .
Copyright © 2015 Summer Brennan.
Excerpted by permission of Counterpoint.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Dramatis Personae xi
Maps xv
Prologue 1
Part I The Broken Shore
1 The Oyster Farm 9
2 Fault Lines 27
3 The Fable of the California Oyster 43
4 A Friend of the Earth 65
Part II How to Curate the Wild
5 A New Venture 85
6 The Saving of Point Reyes 99
7 Enter the Blast Furnace 121
8 The Non-Natives Are Restless 131
9 Reinforcements 157
10 The Worst-Case Scenario 183
Part III The Geography of Hope
11 Casino 203
12 David v. Goliath 217
13 Shell Games 237
14 Reckoning 261
15 In Search of an Original Wild 281
Acknowledgments 289
Selected Bibliography 297
Appendices 315
Index 365