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TOM WHEELER:

Welcome to the Econews Report. I'm your host this week, Tom Wheeler, executive director of EPIC, the Environmental Protection Information Center. And joining me is my friend and colleague, Jen Kalt, executive director of Humboldt Baykeeper. Hey, Jen. And we are talking about oysters today with David George Gordon, author of Heaven on the Half Shell, a new book coming out about oysters on the West Coast. Welcome, David.

DAVID GEORGE GORDON:

Hey, it's great to be here.

WHEELER:

All right. So David, you have a book coming out and to celebrate the book coming out, we have a couple of events coming up. Do you want me to plug them or would you like to plug them?

GORDON:

Well, no, go right ahead. So make me feel good.

WHEELER:

On September 8th, you can hear David speak at Northtown Books at 7pm. And on Sunday, September 10th at 4pm at Wrangletown Cider, you can hear David and get to sample oysters. So come on out if you are oyster curious to the events on September 8th at 7pm at NorthTown Books and September 10th at 4pm at Wrangletown Cider, both in Arcata. All right, so talking about oysters. This is a subject near and dear to your heart, Jen. And for the folks of Humboldt Bay, because we are one of the largest oyster producing areas on the West Coast. Can you quickly give me the stat?

JEN KALT:

It is probably the largest oyster producing area in California, about 50 percent, 75 percent, depends who you ask, of all the oysters harvested in California are harvested here in North Humboldt Bay, also known to some people as Arcata Bay. But we're also a huge source of oyster seed, which are baby little teeny tiny oysters, because Humboldt Bay is free of all the oyster diseases that threaten places like Tomales Bay and stuff. So from Humboldt Bay you can raise oyster seed and ship them anywhere in the world because you will not be passing along those diseases. So that disease-free certification is critical.

WHEELER:

All right. And so David, I got to thumb through your book earlier and let me say, it's a fantastic book. I think one of my favorite things about it were all of the great historical photos. You must've spent a lot of time in a library's archive somewhere to find all of these good photos from the history of oyster cultivation in the Pacific Northwest. Anybody who likes oysters will enjoy David's book because it is a thorough and complete history of, of oysters here on the West coast, and also previews some of the issues that the oyster industry and our waters are going to face as a result of climate change and other issues like invasive species. So it's a wonderful telling of both the history and the future of oysters. So let's, let's get into some of the history. So oysters have been cultivated long before white folks were in the Pacific Northwest. Talk to us about how the indigenous peoples of the West coast had historically cultivated oysters.

GORDON:

You know, I really learned a lesson in working on this new edition of the book that I worked much more closely with tribes and tribal aquaculture people, oyster farmers. And one thing I learned right off the bat is we have kind of a European, Eurocentric perspective on what farming and harvesting would be for oysters. So we kind of always assumed that, well, gee, they would go to the beach and grab whatever was grabbable and eat it. There's lots of evidence showing mounds that go back hundreds and thousands of years. But more recently, we're learning that there was a lot of cultivation of prime shellfish lands, what they now call clam gardens. And that's becoming a trendy thing to reestablish clam gardens on usual and accustomed harvesting areas. And it's a good one, but it basically is showing that the Native Americans had a bigger stake in ensuring that they always had good food. And some of it was renowned throughout the West, as in this tribe really has their thing. So it was really fascinating to work on more recent developments and that whole thing of clam gardens and how tribal aquaculture goes back to the Rafidi decision. That's kind of like a, well, you hear a lot about the Salmon Treaty. Well, there also was a shellfish treaty called the Rafidi Act and gave the tribes rights to land that they really did not have a stake in. A lot of those places have developed big aquaculture programs. I don't know about Humboldt Bay. Is that something that's happening there?

KALT:

well? Not that I'm aware of. I've read a little bit about the clam gardens and I think that the geography of Humboldt Bay, where there's these huge expanses of flat mud flats, they're already flat. And my understanding of the clam gardens is basically that people use rocks to make larger flat mud shelves where the clams can thrive and be harvested. I don't know if there's any knowledge about doing that here in Humboldt Bay.

GORDON:

You know, they found a whole spit, a point of land, that was made out of rock from fire pits. When they wanted to eat clams or oysters, it was an easy thing to create like a bonfire, put the clams or oysters in it, cover it with kelp, and let it steam itself. Well, eventually the rocks that they're using to heat that will break. They're volcanic rocks, so they break. And all the little shards eventually build up, and they wound up using those to create this whole spit, which is now one of the best oyster growing areas in the Puget Sound area. So it's kind of amazing that we're benefiting from technology that's thousands of years old.

WHEELER:

Well, this sounds like a future episode of the Eco News Report. We need to talk with the Wiyan tribe and Yurok tribe to see if they have a historic clam gardening within their memory. So, and I appreciate your point that you made earlier, David, that this realization that Indigenous people have been cultivating oysters is kind of a new one to us because we had Euro-Americans coming to the West Coast and there was this just abundance of oysters that maybe didn't look like gardens or cultivation in manners that they were familiar with, but they found themselves after the Indigenous people were dispossessed of their lands with just this rich bounty of oysters. And this oyster bounty helped fuel the settlement of the West Coast. Can you talk about the role of oysters as a foodstuff for the initial wave of folks coming over to log or to mine or to farm?

GORDON:

You know, in my book, I talk about the fact that it really kicked off with the gold rush of 1849. So Sutter's Creek just brought zillions of people. You can see paintings of San Francisco Bay, and there's like hardly any structures on land, but there's zillions of ships at anchor. Those are all bringing prospectors from the East Coast to the West Coast, and those people were primed. Very few of them really became rich from the gold strikes, but what they did get was unlimited access to oysters. And even the title of our book, Heaven on the Half Shell, is a Mark Twain quote, writing about a hotel in San Francisco that had like a happy hour that was notoriously good. So people were totally in love with the supply of oysters that they could have. You could even get mock oysters in a can if you were a prospector. So it was kind of a crazy, well, it was a craze to be eating seafood at that time. It really, really took off. Unfortunately, because they were reaping, they were harvesting without putting anything back or making better environments for the oysters they loved so much, they basically started running out of oysters and freaking out over that. They sent people out looking for new stocks of oysters, and that went as far as Mazatlan on the West Coast in Mexico, and far north looking up into Alaska. But in the meantime, in Humboldt Bay, there was some harvesting going on naturally, even at that time, and that remained to be a source for a long history. But I guess my real point is, eventually they discovered Willapa Bay was in Washington, and all these stocks of oysters that had not been harvested commercially at that point, they started shipping them down on schooners, and that really kicked off the craze again. Now you could have all the oysters you wanted, but again, without paying back to the environment. So it was kind of a one-way trip.

WHEELER:

So I will do a brief song. I talked to David a little earlier before the show about this, but there is a restaurant in Seattle, Ivers. It was a, it's a classic Seattle institution and the, the proprietor of Ivers, Iver himself, Iver Hoglund, Hoglund, something like that. Excuse my Norwegian pronunciation. He had a television show on local TV in the 1950s when my mom was growing up and he would sing this song and it was the old settler song also called Acres of Clams. And I'll do the last verse. No longer a slave to ambition. I laugh at the world and it shams when I think of my pleasant condition surrounded by acres of clams. And this song is, is a lot of fun. There's a dozen verses or so. And it talks about the story of a person coming to the Pacific Northwest. He tried mining and failed. He tried logging and failed. He tried farming and failed. But you know, once he decided to just settle down, he found himself happy because he was surrounded by the bounty of nature, surrounded by acres of clams, which I assume also means oysters too.

KALT:

It could mean oysters, but what I've been told is that the Wiyot people didn't eat a lot of oysters in Humboldt Bay because they're really tiny. Those limpy oysters are little bitty things, and the clams that live here are huge. Some of them are very, very large.

WHEELER:

Let's talk about that. Let's talk about the oysters that are native to the West coast, because I think a lot of people may not have ever had a native oyster to the West coast. So David, as I understand it, Olympia oysters were the only oyster on the West coast during this kind of big boom period. And this is before we had other oysters. Talk to us about the native Olympia oyster.

GORDON:

Well, native Olympia oysters are much smaller than, let's say, the Pacific or Japanese oysters can grow. They're easy to overlook, to tell you the truth, unless you're out hunting for them. And then, of course, they're in abundance, we hope. But they're native oysters, and everything else that we enjoy, the Pacifics, the Kumamotos, I know are kind of Humboldt Bay's pride, those all come from other places, eastern oysters. So we have lots of different types of oysters, species of oysters, but there's only one native. Kind of amazing.

WHEELER:

So I, I've never had an Olympia oyster. I imagine you've done a lot of taste testing as part of this book. Can you describe the taste of an Olympia oyster? Cause I've, I've heard that they are coppery.

GORDON:

That seems to be the adjective that comes up a lot, and even in old accounts of, and we had these oysters, they do have a metallic tinge to them. I love them. They're actually, what I like to do is put them on a barbecue that takes about half a minute to open, and then you have these really nice, almost pistachio nut-sized snacks. Oh, delightful. That's a good way to go.

WHEELER:

Well, so let, let me talk about another thing I appreciated about your book, which is that it's the history of oysters on the West coast and it is interspersed throughout with the recipes from prominent Pacific Northwest chefs from old accounts, 18 something history books are not history books, probably books that are now history that detail how people ate them once upon a time. What is your favorite recipe in the book? Or alternatively, what's your favorite way to prepare oysters?

GORDON:

Oh, heavens. You know what? I really, really, really love oysters in their many and varied forms. So it's hard to pick one recipe. And there are some really good ones. I would say a shout out to Marianna Wagner, who actually did all the recipes and wine pairings and all that stuff in the book. So good for her at Washington Sea Grant. But I really like the simpler dishes. And there's one classic from the days of the Gold Rush that I really like. It's called Hangtown Fry. And it's basically an omelet with oysters in it, ideally Olympia oysters, because that's what the prospectors and pioneers were down. Some people say it's actually almost like an egg foo young. But Hangtown is Placerville, California. So we're talking Gold Rush settlement, and probably a pretty lawless place. It's said that that was the often requested as the last meal before someone was about to be hanged.

WHEELER:

I love the story, the etymology of that name. Fascinating.

GORDON:

I was raised by an English teacher. I can't help it.

WHEELER:

Well, it's good. It's good. The eco news. And we're talking about oysters with David George Gordon, author of the new book, heaven on a half shell. So oysters, they are, I think some people find them to be kind of an unlikely friend to the environs, but Jen, I want you to talk about how oyster farming in humble Bay has been a benefit to water quality here and how they keepers ended up with alliances with a lot of our oyster manufacturers, because you both want and desire the same thing, clean water.

KALT:

That's right. The oyster industry relies entirely on clean water. So a lot of people have probably heard or read about how every time it rains, there's some amount of bacteria that flushes into Humboldt Bay. And it's typically E. coli and associated viruses that are from fecal pollution, basically. So gross, right? That's a way to spread diseases. If you can eat raw oysters out of Humboldt Bay under normal circumstances, could could make you sick in the short term. So it can also it can be a little bit worse than that for certain people who have liver diseases and stuff. But the oyster industry is heavily regulated. And every time there's significant amounts of rainfall, depending on where they are located in the bay, they have to stop harvesting for maybe three days, maybe five days. But if it keeps raining all winter long, like it did last winter, they can be shut down for months. And so really important to have clean water in the bay, healthy and and functioning wastewater treatment systems is really, really important, because if there are sewage spills, all the oysters have to be recalled from where they've been shipped to. And it's it's imagine having a farm where people could just come along and dump a bunch of raw sewage on your on your field. That would be pretty awkward. But they're farming on public trust land. So anyway, it wasn't always this way that environmental groups like Humboldt Baykeeper and oyster companies were allies. So in the 1990s, the oysters were grown on the bottom of the bay. And then the oyster farmers would use like basically giant vacuums to suck up all the oysters off the mud, killing all the eelgrass. They would also kill a bunch of oyster predators like bat rays and Dungeness crabs, because those guys could just come along and eat the oysters off the the bottom of the bay. Nowadays, they're all grown on lines up above the mudflats. And so there's no need to kill predators. There's plenty of space underneath them for the eelgrass to be growing. So the oysters and the eelgrass, not only can they coexist, they can actually be a benefit to each other. And the oysters role in that relationship is they filter things out of the water, the water column. And so they make the water clearer and there can be more light penetrating through the water to the eelgrass below.

WHEELER:

There you go. That was very succinct. I feel like I've learned, I have like a crash course in oyster farming in Humboldt Bay. So, so David, at the beginning of the show, we talked about how the oysters are a good way to talk about our past, our heritage, indigenous cultivation practices, early settlers use of oysters. Let's talk about oysters as part of our future. So if the oysters are indicator species that, that something might be wrong, what are, what are the things that are impacting oysters? What are the things that oysters are telling us may be out of whack at present? What are the threats to oysters in other words?

GORDON:

Well, you know, I really want to say, before I address that directly, that there's a saying, when the tide is out, the table is set. And some people attribute that, an old Indian saying, I don't really know where that expression comes from, but I really like the fact that we're talking about bringing people to the table. And that's what food does. As a matter of fact, when I was working with a group, Slow Food Seattle, a long time ago, one of their mainstays was people can do all sorts of stuff when they're actually at the table. And it's important that the foods that we have are sustainable. And I'm really happy that oysters always get really high ratings from these various seafood sustainability studies. So we're encouraging people to have a direct share in the health of the environment, just through the food that they have. From tide to table is a slogan as well. I really like that a lot. And what the oysters are telling us, particularly when we look at, let's say, the East Coast, where things were not so good for many, and many a year, for water quality, they're now going to great lengths to bring oysters back into the environment. On our side of the world, we're basically doing what we can to make sure they can continue to stay as an item of appreciation by people. But it's really about getting people focused on water quality and understanding that what they do on land, even if it's 100 miles up road, if you're driving your car and you use your brakes, you're contributing to some form of water pollution. So we need to really focus on what we can do to keep the Northwest, and by Northwest, I include Northern California, as a haven for oysters. I'm really glad that people are starting to bring Olympia oysters back onto their environment, and getting all the benefits from that. So I'm looking more at pat ourselves on the back for doing what we can to keep it clean.

WHEELER:

that. Let's talk about climate change, climate change, and then related to climate change is ocean acidification in that as our global CO2 concentrations continue to rise, we have more carbon dioxide in water, which forms carbonic acid, which makes the water more acidic. As I understand Washington state is pretty concerned about this because the Puget Sound doesn't quite drain as fast as Humboldt Bay does. It doesn't refresh as often. And so the effects of ocean acidification are more pronounced in the Puget Sound than they are here in Humboldt Bay. But still too here in Humboldt Bay, we are growing concerned about ocean acidification. David, can you talk about ocean acidification and its ramifications for the oyster industry?

GORDON:

Yeah, it's sort of a, it's a thing about the, we're basically looking at the effect of like putting a fizzy in the water. You get that once you build up the carbon, it's looking for calcium to dissolve. And for hatcheries, that can be really disastrous. There was a whole period of time in Washington where the hatcheries were failing to produce seed, baby oysters, and that was because of ocean acidification. So that's really what brought up the red alert for most farms in my part of the world. But they're finding that is indeed an issue. And it is of course, the ocean being the kind of the giant buffer that it is for climate in general, we really need to get a handle on what we can do to counteract the effects of ocean acidification. And I'm happy to say that growing oysters is proving beneficial in lots of ways for becoming part of that buffer. So, and farming seaweed as well, and oysters and seaweed seems to become the winning combination.

KALT:

Well, and the eelgrass to the flip side of that eelgrass rooster relationship is eelgrass is thought to help buffer ocean acidification by keeping the pH levels a little bit higher. And then there's ocean temperature though, which is rising. And I was just this weekend, I just read a report on five years of data looking at eelgrass in Humboldt Bay. And it looks like because the water is warming and the air is warming, and we've had a drought and so, you know, the eelgrass has been in decline in a lot of places because of the spread of a disease.

WHEELER:

KALT:

Humboldt Bay, yeah, which Humboldt Bay has approximately a third of the remaining eelgrass beds in California and it's always been quite healthy, but there's not enough monitoring over many years. But in the last five years, there's been a lot more of this disease and it's a, it's apparently it's a virus that's known as eelgrass wasting disease. And so the warming temperatures are really causing some, some issues with eelgrass. And as the eelgrass dies off, there's more and more erosion in the channels in the bay because the eelgrass roots are not holding that soil together. So we're looking at potentially major changes around Humboldt Bay because of all these cascading effects.

GORDON:

Hey, I want to say also, though, that for your listeners, eelgrass is really important on lots of levels. It shapes the environment, the topography, and so on. But also, it's a major food for all these migratory birds that go up and down the Pacific flyway. And they have stop-offs just to eat eelgrass. So you'll see Black Brant, for example, is a wonderful goose-like bird that basically thrives on eelgrass. So as that becomes in decline, we're making it even harder to pull off what's already a magnificent migration by getting rid of these little roadside stop-offs, if you will.

KALT:

That's true, and eelgrass is really considered a keystone species for so many different critters. So, all kinds of fish lay their eggs on eelgrass leaves, and it's just, it's the foundation of a whole thriving ecosystem and a whole bunch of different critters, birds and invertebrates and fish and so on.

GORDON:

And it is really wonderful that in Humboldt Bay, the aquaculture programs are now pretty darn respectful of eelgrass beds, which is great. I mean, that's basically how we can all get along, can't we?

KALT:

Well, eelgrass is so ecologically important that state and federal governments have a no net loss policy for eelgrass. So just building a little dock for the Humboldt Bay Rowing Association, you have to replace every bit of eelgrass that you're shading, or if you're digging it out through dredging or any kind of projects like that. So it's protected to the level that wetlands are protected, even though it's not considered a rare plant in and of itself. So it's pretty interesting.

WHEELER:

Yeah. Wow. So David, what, what were you hoping to achieve in writing this book? What was, what was the goal? Was it just to eat more oysters and then have an excuse to eat more oysters? And so you came up with a project or, or were you, were you hoping, yeah. Tell us about the inspiration.

GORDON:

Well, I need to tell you a little bit of history of my own. I wrote the original Heaven on the Half Shell 20-some years ago when I worked as a science writer at Washington Sea Grant. And if you look at the book, you'll see that the last chapter of this book is written by the current science writer at Washington Sea Grant. So it was a nice handing off. But when that book came out, there was no mention of ocean acidification, for example. And it was amazing to me over the course of 20 years how much had changed. Everything from technologies, how they raised the oysters themselves, the whole rise of foodie culture is relatively new. Our perspective on both the contributions of Native Americans to our understanding and also to Japanese Americans who were the original farmers of Pacific oysters here on our coast. All of that stuff was added into the book in what I thought was going to be an easy project. Between that and COVID, it took like three years to really do an update of that book. University of Washington Press republished it. But really, it was just shocking to me what wasn't in the book after I had thought I'd spent a lot of years writing a pretty complete and comprehensive book. It needed to be rewritten.

WHEELER:

Well, David, thank you so much. And again, if you are interested in geeking out about oysters, you can hear David talk on September 8 at 7pm at Northtown Books, or on Sunday, September 10 at 4pm at Wrangletown Cider. And if you go to Wrangletown Cider, you also get to enjoy oysters. So check out those events. And David, thank you so much for joining the Econ News Report.

GORDON:

This has been great. I appreciate it.

WHEELER:

And listeners, join us again next week on this time and channel for more environmental news from the North Coast of California.