Small U.S. Oyster Farms Are on the Rise

Standing on the plywood deck of a 22-foot aluminum pontoon boat, Jules Opton-Himmel surveys his domain. “This is my farm,” says the Yale forestry school grad, sweeping his arm over a pristine expanse of water stretching 300 yards from a red and green buoy to a white buoy on which a rumpled seagull perches. The 31-year-old proprietor of Walrus & Carpenter Oysters has spent the past three years tending half a million bivalves in the swift-flowing, nutrient-rich tides of Rhode Island’s Ninigret Pond, a shallow body of brackish water separated by a hundred yards of sand and scrub from the Atlantic Ocean. The oysters grow in about two years from seeds smaller than a dime to meaty, hard-shelled adults that fetch up to 85¢ a piece wholesale and retail for as much as $3 on the half shell in high-end oyster bars and restaurants.

Since the wild oyster beds of the U.S. East Coast were devastated by outbreaks of the MSX parasite starting in the 1990s, the emergence of new breeds of disease-resistant shellfish have led to a revival of small-scale oyster farming. The resurgence has been spurred by a growing community of foodies who pride themselves on being able to tell a Chesapeake Bay Barcat from a Charlestown Pond East Beach Blonde.