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JENNIFER KALT:

Welcome to the Econews Report. I'm your host this week, Jen Kalt with Humboldt Waterkeeper, formerly Humboldt Baykeeper. You may have noticed we changed her name recently. I'm joined this week by local oyster farmer Sebastian Elrite of AquaRodeo Farms. Thanks so much for being on the show, Sebastian. Glad to be here. So you also own Humboldt Bay Provisions Oyster Bar in Old Town, right? Second and G in Old Town?

SEBASTIAN ELRITE:

Yeah. We've been going on that for a little bit, did a little branding change in 2016 or so, but I took it over in 2018 and been bringing in fresh shellfish since the beginning and just calling it my own after 2018.

KALT:

Awesome. I just learned that not too long ago. So I was I was happily surprised to find out that you owned it. So what we're going to talk about today is the importance of the oyster industry in Humboldt Bay, and the importance of water quality, which is where Humboldt Waterkeeper and oyster farmers intersect, and we're rowing in the same direction, so to speak. But before we get into all that, I want to just ask you, how did you get into oyster farming?

ELRITE:

Well, when I came up here to go to school at the college, back then it was Humboldt State, I got a part-time summer job with North Bay Shellfish. I worked for the season with them and that led into another opportunity to have some part-time work during the school year with what was then called Kuiper Mariculture, which is a nursery operation that was here on the bay for quite some time.

KALT:

So by nursery operation, you mean they grew baby oysters? Yeah, they

ELRITE:

did remote setting of larvae and upwelling silos and a little bit of Flopsy type work in the inception period and different stuff like that. This was started off in 1992-93, so we've been here for a while.

KALT:

Wow, so you work for Ted Kuyper up in Jasper Slough? Yes, indeed. His operation there is just getting restarted, right?

ELRITE:

Yeah, Bill and Kim are putting in the permits and I think Ted's actually helping them reconstitute the process.

KALT:

there. Yeah, that's very cool. Very cool. So you already used a bunch of acronyms and oyster jargon that we should probably down for people, right? So upwelling silo.

ELRITE:

Well, they figured out through some trials and tribulations that they could do some densely packed seed oysters in a tube with a false bottom that had an upwelling water flow to bring the oyster dense bed fresh food and water continuously. That was a technique to help just increase densities and manage larger volumes of oyster seed product.

KALT:

Okay, okay. The vast majority of oysters harvested in California come from North Humboldt Bay.

ELRITE:

Right, right. That's the only area that's actually what they call conditionally approved that is able to harvest oysters for direct human consumption on Humboldt Bay.

KALT:

So north of the bridge, basically.

ELRITE:

Yeah, yeah, there's a couple different areas just kind of based on water flow and that kind of thing. And then they kind of regulate a few different conditions based on some of the different studies and data analysis that they've done over the past 30 or so years for the health department type stuff.

KALT:

I've heard anywhere from 60% to 90%. Do you know what the what the real figure is?

ELRITE:

you know, it's kind of fluctuated a little bit, but it's in that range. There was a pretty good-sized oyster operation out of Point Reyes National Seashore for some time that kind of knocked the percentage down for Humboldt Bay as far as California total production. They were denied a permit recertification quite some time ago, probably about maybe five to ten years ago now. Humboldt Bay has really took the spotlight on that as far as oyster production. The legislature a couple years back, I think like at the 30th Oyster Festival, they recognized Humboldt Bay as the oyster capital of California, or Arcata Bay is what some people would say, right?

KALT:

Yeah, Arcata Bay, North Humboldt Bay, same way the Wiyot tribe calls it. Weegee is the name for the whole bay, or the whole complex. Yeah, yeah. Wow, okay. Well, okay, so you mentioned Drake's Bay, so that used to be a hot topic. We would get a lot of questions about this, and back in the 90s, the oyster industry was growing oysters down on the mudflats, and so there were a lot of impacts, like they would basically vacuum up the oysters off the bottom, and they would kill a lot of eelgrass. A lot of times, people still, to this day, will call Humboldt Waterkeeper and say, aren't oysters bad for the environment, and what's your position on oyster farming? Because of Drake's Bay being in the news quite a bit a few years ago, their issue was largely that they were in a national seashore, designated national seashore, national park. The permit was set to expire, to phase it out, and then it turned into a big hullabaloo. Didn't really have anything to do with what goes on in Humboldt Bay. So can you talk a little bit about the ecology of oysters, and how oysters fit into the bigger picture of the health of the bay, and what interactions there are with other creatures in the bay?

ELRITE:

Oysters are definitely a good part of keeping the water clarity up to a high degree because from some of the stuff that I understand, a good size medium oyster will filter about 50 gallons of water a day. And through that process, they'll get the stuff that they don't eat and make that into small little packets that actually just fall down to the bottom or fall to the wayside and stop being suspended. So the water clarity is a big thing. And also they do some sequestration of different elements, I think phosphates and some calcium carbonate and some of that kind of stuff. So they help just keep some of that stuff out of the water that might be a problem if it was overly abundant.

KALT:

Right, and having clearer water is actually good for eelgrass. So we've gone from this old school way of farming oysters on the bottom of the bay and then vacuuming up the eelgrass along with it and killing the eelgrass, which if you look at some current aerial photos of Humboldt Bay, you can still see those circular scars. Like back in the, I don't know, I think it was in the late 90s, the techniques changed that people weren't growing the oysters on the bottom anymore like they were. And so taking all these particles out of the water and clarifying the water basically has a positive effect on eelgrass. From what I understand, eelgrass is limited by the turbidity in the water in Humboldt Bay. So can you tell us a little bit about your methods, how you actually are growing the oysters? Since you're not growing them on the bottom anymore, what do you do? Well, the

ELRITE:

way I grow my oysters is I'm doing what might be called a stick and bag technique. I have a couple of pipes, PVC pipes that I drive into the ground. They're about three feet tall or so. And then I have a soft pliable bag that has some closures on the ends. And I'm able to support those bags on these PVC pipes anywhere from six to eight inches off of the mud flat. So it's a 3D space of water flow all around the oysters. And that helps with not letting the oysters get choked out if they were to settle into the mud or that kind of thing.

KALT:

And does it help with how they look? Is there some aesthetic quality to oysters?

ELRITE:

Because I'm doing what they call single oysters, I'm not doing clustered oysters, which is kind of a different methodology. The way that the bags are set up, they kind of rock back and forth in the tide and the wind flow and that kind of thing. And so they kind of gently rub against each other and help keep the barnacles and some of those fouling organisms off the oysters themselves. That tends to lead to having a nicer cupped shell for the half shell market usually.

KALT:

So that's where people go to a restaurant and buy it, on a plate with a bunch of rock salt.

ELRITE:

Athlete guys or that kind of thing.

KALT:

Yeah, cool. Where is your farm?

ELRITE:

My farm is probably about 300 or 400 yards away from some of the old Arcata wharf ruins that you can see poking up in the middle of the bay, more towards the peninsula side than the highway side.

KALT:

And how big is it?

ELRITE:

I'm active on about four and a half, five acres or so. My parcel plot on lease papers is about 10 acres.

KALT:

And do you have plans to expand or is that is that 10 acres is the part you're farming on the best part and the rest of it is just not really great for farming? Well there's

ELRITE:

In the actual plot that's been designated and signed off on as oyster lease area, some of it's a little bit too low, so the eelgrass is a little bit denser down that way. So, they don't want us to go into that area as much and do any kind of disturbance. So, usually we just float over the top of that and not worry about that. Plus, that area is a lot softer, so it would tend to swallow up any kind of infrastructure a lot more readily, I should say. We kind of stay up towards the higher elevations in the leased area because the ground's a little bit firmer and there's a lot less eelgrass. It's a lot more patchy in the higher elevations in the tide.

KALT:

level. That makes sense. So the eelgrass is growing underneath some of your wines, but it's not super dense. It's kind of patchy there.

ELRITE:

Yeah it's pretty patchy but the thing that comes to mind is that it changes a little bit every season so some seasons it seems a little bit denser and other seasons it might recede depending on some of the factors that happen throughout the winter and how many brant geese come through that really chomp on it. That kind of stuff.

KALT:

stuff. Yeah, so for the listeners who aren't familiar with eelgrass, it's a flowering plant. It grows in fairly shallow water and the black branch geese, they migrate through here and the main food source for them is eelgrass. Like there are so few animals that are that specific to one plant. But if you think about like pandas eat bamboo and koalas eat eucalyptus and black bran eat eelgrass. That's their jam. They eat eelgrass. Yes, indeed. So it's what botanists call a rhizomatous plant. So it spreads by basically underground stems, kind of like a strawberry, only the horizontal stems are underground. A lot of times it gets grazed by the branch and then it just re-sprouts. And then this time of year, you'll see a bunch of the dead leaves all over the beach and these big wads. It's like a very, what, a half inch wide leaf. The leaves break off. They're seasonal, so they grow really vigorously and then the storms come and their leaves are dying back for the winter and they break off and they make these huge balls that people call eelgrass rack that end up on the beach right about this time. I've heard it's really good for compost. Anyway, it's a plant that it's not considered a rare plant, but it's heavily protected because it is so important for so many different critters. And it's thought to have a buffering effect against the ocean acidification that's impacting oyster farms and all kinds of other marine life in other parts of the world. But there's something like two-thirds of the eelgrass in California are here in Humboldt Bay. That's another unique aspect of Humboldt Bay is that we still have a good water quality. We haven't dredged and filled all the wetlands that the eelgrass is growing in. So back to the oysters. So you were talking about the Flopsy. Can you explain what a Flopsy is?

ELRITE:

Dr. Kahneman Flupse is a more recent development. It's a floating upwell system. We had mentioned those upwell silos. There's a land-based style of upwelling system for a very small nursery type oyster seed product. Then there's the Flupse, which is more of a put it in the water like a dock, a floating dock. Then you have very large silos inside that system. Most often they'll use a paddle wheel to try to keep the water flow going through the silos that have the contained dense numbers of oysters all the way up to, I think in Washington State, they even do adult oysters in Flupse. They're really huge in the Puget Sound in a couple spots.

KALT:

Oh, really? They grow them to market size in the Flipsie?

ELRITE:

Either they grow them to market size or they hold them for prolonged periods until they're ready to ship them and floating up well systems like that, I think.

KALT:

Yeah, that makes sense. So okay, we have these flopsies, they're called. People have probably seen them and not known what they were, unless someone told you, but you see them tied up to docks in some cases. There's Taylor Mariculture has some that are at the old pulp mill dock in Samoa, which is pretty cool, really, that they took what used to be the chemical dock where they had a pipe that they would pipe in all the chlorine and other chemicals to the pulp mill. And now it's actually producing baby oysters.

ELRITE:

Yeah, in a big way. They're doing pretty good.

KALT:

And then Hog Island Oyster Company has a hatchery where they're actually breeding the oysters. And then the larvae are these tiny little things like the size of a dot you could make with a pen or something. But if you watch closely, you can see them actually swimming around. The EcoNews report, I'm talking with Sebastian Elright of Aqua Rodeo Farms and Humboldt Bay Provisions and we're talking about Humboldt Bay oysters. What happens? They settle on something solid and then they start to form a shell and make these tiny little baby oysters.

ELRITE:

seeds? Brian Yeah. Well, the way that most of the hatchery techniques are going with right now is they're making fine ground shell powder and they're introducing the larvae to that in a controlled water system. And so the idea is that that fine powder is small enough so that only one little oyster will settle on that. So that's how you get the single oysters as opposed to traditionally or maybe naturally might have been an oyster bed with clusters of oysters.

KALT:

everywhere and then you take those individual tiny little oysters and then what do you do you just

ELRITE:

nurture them and put them in those upwelling silos on the shore base with really fine mesh to hold them so you don't lose them. And then you can just nurture them up, maybe feed them some supplemental algae paste, keep screening them as they grow, and eventually you'll end up with three-eighths screen or half-inch screen oysters. And once they get that big, they're pretty much ready to either go into somebody's farm that wants to grow them for human consumption, or they'll hold them for a little bit more to get them big enough so that the time on the farm isn't as long. It's in the flopsy, growing real nice. They can hold them all the way up to like three-quarters of an inch screen or something like that. So that's how that kind of works for the nursery operations.

KALT:

Very cool. So I've taken a tour of Hog Island's whole operation, and I was really stunned to learn that Humboldt Bay is the only water body in California that is certified to be disease-free for oyster diseases. So people can ship these oyster seed, as they're called, all over the world, which is really amazing. And the oyster seed industry in Humboldt Bay has grown exponentially in the last decade or so, in part because some of the other areas where a lot of seed used to be grown in Oregon and Washington are experiencing ocean acidification to the point where they were having a difficult time raising the baby oysters there. So protecting Humboldt Bay's disease-free status, basically by making sure people aren't bringing in oyster diseases from other parts of the world, either, I don't know, on vessels or on oyster gear or something like that, is really important. I learned years ago, and I don't know if it's still true, that the amount of seed is really a limiting factor for the oyster industry. And is that still true, that it's tough to get enough seed?

ELRITE:

has been in years gone by, especially like you say, when a lot of that ocean acidification was really having a heavy impact on some of the nurseries and the natural and wild settlement that some of the farms really relied on in some parts of Washington and that kind of thing. A lot of those farms that did rely on that stuff, really once the ocean acidification came up and started rearing its head, the natural recruitment that they had really plummeted. So then they, everybody hit the hatcheries and the hatcheries were having a hard time. So I mean, there was like kind of an oyster drought in the 2015, 2016, 2013, in those years until the hatcheries came up with some management systems and strategies to help mitigate for that high acidification in the water column that they were suffering from. At this point in time, it seems like we're in a fairly safe space with seed production, especially in Humboldt Bay, as you had mentioned, because there's a lot more seed type producers right here in Humboldt Bay as compared to say five or 10 years ago.

KALT:

I've read that a lot of the management involves monitoring the ocean waters, monitoring the pH of the ocean, and then also buffering the water. So if the waters are too acidic, then adding some kind of calcium or something to bring that acidity, bring the pH up and make it less acidic. So that is a good point to turn to. Talking about water quality, ocean acidification is such a global issue. I mean, what can we do about this besides manage the pH levels of the waters once they're brought into the hatchery? I mean, what we need to do is get off of fossil fuels and slow down climate change, because that's where a lot of the ocean acidification is being caused, right? But the other water quality issues that affect oyster growing in our region and probably elsewhere has to do with stormwater runoff. So that is a lot of where I was saying the Humboldt Waterkeeper and oyster farmers are rowing in the same direction, because we're trying to protect water quality, and it's mostly from bacteria pollution. So a lot of people realize that a lot of our ocean beaches have sometimes high levels of bacteria pollution, especially after it rains, and Little River, Moonstone Beach, Clam Beach are often in the news. But the fact that oyster farms have to shut down every time it rains can be really difficult for you guys to manage, because sometimes, like this past winter, the Department of Public Health that manages the shellfish industry and makes sure that everybody's protecting public health by not harvesting oysters after it rains, they told me that this past winter, the oyster industry in Humboldt Bay was closed down for 150 days. Yeah. And 141 of those days, it was because of rain. Sometimes it's because of other things.

ELRITE:

fuel spills and stuff like that sometimes.

KALT:

of thing. I think that people don't really realize how hard oyster farmers work and various government regulators work to protect public health and make sure the oysters you're eating are safe to eat raw. People can eat raw oysters out of Humboldt Bay. You don't have to cook them as long as it's not raining. So can you just tell the listeners a little bit about what you do to ensure that public safety and health is protected when you're selling oysters?

ELRITE:

couple different things that are in place that have been in place for quite a substantial amount of time. The north part of Humboldt Bay, Arcata Bay, is what they call conditionally approved and they have a state agency that manages shellfish growing areas and they issue management plans for different areas pretty much every year. And as shellfish growers, we have to sign off and agree on the conditions of those management plans and help the agency carry those conditions in regards to sampling and reporting and some of those things. We have to help carry that forward and get those I's dotted and those T's crossed. As far as there's a muscle watch program that's a statewide program that looks for the red tides and looks for the domoic acids and some of those types of issues. We do periodic sampling through a program for Vibrio, which is like a viral contaminant that can be present during certain times of the year when the warm waters and stuff like that. And then of course we have our fecal coliform sampling that we do through water quality and meat quality samples that are compliance on a regular basis. Usually we're doing water samples once a month and meat samples. I think they're doing meat samples for coliform type stuff once a month at different spots at the Bay as well. We all don't have to do the meat samples all the time. Only if we're having issues with the water sample, then we have to graduate to see how much is actually in the oysters themselves aside from what's in the water.

KALT:

water. Yeah, it's pretty complicated. It's a lot of different things that can impact the oysters and sometimes it's kind of mind-boggling to me to think about farming in a place where all this other stuff that's completely out of your control can be going on. There's been a lot of studies over the years. Now we're doing genetic studies looking at the source of the fecal coliform and a lot of indications pointing to cattle as being the primary source in North Bay, so in South Bay, but there's no oyster farms down there. Dogs are a big source in some areas, but it really seems like there could be some fairly straightforward methods to try to reduce this kind of pollution, like fencing cattle out of streams and sloughs, for example. Those are things that have a negative impact on oysters, but I do want to talk about all the reasons oysters are really good for you. Like, for example, they're really low in mercury and that's because they're filter feeders. They eat very low on the food chain, so to avoid mercury, you eat low on the food chain. Some of the highest mercury levels are found in things like leopard shark and lingcod, which are very long-lived and they're eating very high on the food chain. The other thing about oysters I learned from a friend of mine who, when she was pregnant, she just decided I'm not eating any seafood at all because I don't know what mercury levels are in anything, and then her doctor told her, you're very low in iron. Do you like oysters? You should eat a lot of oysters. So they're high in iron. And what else?

ELRITE:

well-versed in selenium and zinc, omega-3 fatty acids. They have fairly balanced cholesterol levels as far as that goes. They're not like leaning heavy one way or the other. It's like a balanced cholesterol. One thing that oysters have in them that's kind of unusual for an animal of sorts is plant sterols, which are supposed to be real good for your blood and stuff like that.

KALT:

Interesting. The other thing that I'm kind of fascinated by is that they're a protein source that requires very little input. If you eat meat or dairy products, that's a huge amount of land and water and fertilizers and everything. But oysters, they're just growing in the environment that has all this stuff already. So you're not really trucking a bunch of fertilizer and dumping it in there and then it runs off and pollutes the local waterway or whatever. So it seems like a pretty sustainable source of protein.

ELRITE:

Yeah, I would definitely concur with that. No extra feed needed for our oysters here in Humboldt Bay. The water's pretty green most of the time, so that's lots of good algae food for them to munch on. Getting pretty fat and sassy, those little oyster critters.

KALT:

I want to talk about some of your favorite oyster recipes or favorite places to eat oysters like, for example, at Provisions. Yeah, tell us about what what's your favorite way to eat oysters? You just like them raw? I enjoy it.

ELRITE:

raw oyster here and there, but grilled oysters, it seems like you can definitely put down quite a few of those. As far as a ratio, raw versus grilled, I can probably put down three times as many grilled oysters as I could raw oysters. They seem to wash down a little bit better with the beer. And the butter.

KALT:

right little garlic and butter on those little guys yeah so provisions is an oyster bar where you sell your oysters and so people can go in there and buy either raw or grilled oysters prepared in a bunch of different ways it's a beautiful location must be a historic building yeah

ELRITE:

That's a registered historic Boone building is the name of the building. I guess he was one of the first stevedores or something like that. Running people in and out of the Humboldt Bay and the jetty mouth and that kind of stuff.

KALT:

Oh, interesting. Yeah, it's a very cool spot. So if people don't know, it's at 2nd and G.

ELRITE:

Second G at 205 G Street in the Old Town, Eureka.

KALT:

You also do oyster tours, like, out on the bay, right? Yeah.

ELRITE:

I do a two-hour oyster boat ride with a two-hour semi-private tasting over at the Humboldt Bay Provisions to finish off the tour. We usually go out. We can bring up to six people on a boat charter there for the oyster tour. We go out and go around and look at some of the different nursery operations, talk about the phlepses and the different off-bottom culture techniques that are used in the bay now. I also harvest some fresh oysters from my beds to take back to the Humboldt Bay Provisions and do some shucking and jiving.

KALT:

And that tour is great. I've been on your tour and it's really wonderful. It's the first time I ever ate an Olympia oyster, which is our tiny little native oysters. But what kind of oysters do you grow?

ELRITE:

Primarily just the Pacific oysters with a smattering of Kumamoto's here and there. If I get a little small batch, but that's kind of like an artisan attempt because sometimes those seed stocks are harder to come by than just the standard Pacific oyster.

KALT:

Where can people go to learn more either about your oyster tours or events happening at Humboldt Bay provisions or you know your hours and that kind of thing?

ELRITE:

We try to keep a fairly active feed at Humboldt Bay Provisions on Instagram, and then of course our Facebook page for Humboldt Bay Provisions. Our website is humboldtbayprovisions.us. Some of the events that we have that are ongoing, we, Tuesdays, we try to do a little bit of a tasting menu, a little bit of a discount on the oysters, different varieties, and sometimes a special sauce here and there.

KALT:

Great. Well, I hope people will stop by and check it out. If you've noticed, there's an outdoor seating area that looks like a wooden boat. That's Humboldt Bay Provisions. It's a really great spot. Jasmine Segura and I, our Bay Tourist Coordinator, went there last weekend, Sunday afternoon. Have some oysters or whatever floats your boat.

ELRITE:

Oh, you're floating away in the boat.

KALT:

Sebastian, well, thank you so much for being on the show. See you at the Humboldt Bay Provisions one of these days. Alrighty, well, thanks so much. Take care. All right, bye now. This has been another edition of the Econews Report. Join us again on this time and channel next week for more environmental news from the North Coast of California.