Episode 28: Florida Oyster Farming in the Indian River Lagoon

Jessy Wayles:

One of the best parts of restoring oyster habitat is being able to eat them. I’m serious. There’s nothing better than shucking a cold, fresh oyster on a hot summer day.

Everyone argues that their way is the best way to eat them, but for me, it’s a little dollop of cocktail sauce, a bit of horseradish, and a squeeze of fresh lemon, mix that with the briny liqueur of an oyster and its absolute heaven.

Today we’re gonna be chatting with a couple of oyster farmers who use the lagoon as their nursery for farm fresh oysters. And hopefully after our chat, you’ll be inspired to grab a dozen on the half shell at your favorite local restaurant.

Duane DeFreese:

Hi, I am Duane De Freese, executive director of the IRL Council and the Indian River Lagoon National Estuary Program. Welcome to our One Lagoon, One Voice Podcast.

Each week, myself or one of my staff members will host leaders in the community, scientists along the lagoon, people who know a lot about the system to talk about some of the problems.
And most importantly, some of the solutions to solve the Indian River Lagoon’s health and make sure it’s great for future generations.

So let’s get the show started and let’s talk a little lagoon.

Jessy:

Hey everybody. It’s Jessy Wayles, one of three community engagement coordinators with the IRL NEP.

And today on One Lagoon – One Voice, we are going to be talking to two awesome oyster farmers in the lagoon. We have Sam Walsh with SharkBite Oysters. Welcome, Sam.

Sam Walsh:

Thank you so much for having me.

Jessy:

And we have Nicolette Mariano with Treasure Coast Shellfish. Thank you so much, Nicolette, for coming on today.

Nicolette Mariano:

Hi, thanks. Thanks for having me.

Jessy:

So, I did a little bit of a deep dive about your backgrounds. I know you both are Florida natives. I know that you guys also went to college for very similar things, but I wanna hear from you, like why did you guys get into oysters and oyster farming?

So, Sam, can you take us through a little bit of your thought process on why oysters?

Sam:

Sure. Yeah. I had a long roundabout way into oyster farming, but it was all within the scope of aquaculture.

I started my journey in aquaculture at the University of Miami. They have the experimental hatchery down there. So, I was working with finfish. We were working with Mahi-mahi, Cobia, Flounder, Nassau Grouper, and I fell in love with the entire concept.

It was kind of combining my studies in marine biology with this idea that I can create food. I could create something that might be really good for the environment, and I can have a career in.

So I got a job at a big recirculating farm down in Homestead after college. And then I moved around to some different farms. And then finally I realized feeding all these fish so much food every single day, it’s kind of a pain. And you can’t really take days off. And I finally stumbled across an oyster farm in Alabama, and I went and volunteered with them.

Jessy:

Yeah.

Sam:

And just saw that it’s, it’s still, you get to create something with your hands, but you don’t need to feed them anything. Mother nature takes care of all the work in that sense. And I just loved the lifestyle that was surrounding that farm, and I just wanted to mimic it and kind of knew that that’s my place in this industry.

Jessy:

And so, Nicolette, tell us a little bit about your work as well. I know that you volunteered after a few hurricanes, which kinda got you into this but how did you get into oyster farming?

Nicolette:

Yeah, yeah. Um, (laughs), so it was, oh gosh, I don’t even know, ’04 or ’05. Those, Charley, Frances, Ivan, Jeanne, those two years just merged together.

Yeah, I mean, we got hit pretty like almost dead on down to Martin County. I just started the week before that first hurricane. I just did volunteer orientation at Florida Oceanographic Coastal Center across from Stuart Beach. And then that Saturday was gonna be my first day volunteering. I was 14 and hurricane.

Jessy:

Yeah. (laughs)

Nicolette:

At the time they were building the Gamefish Lagoon. So, I mean, there’s nothing in there.

It was after the fact of the storms it was really cool because like the water rose from the lagoon. There were finally little like tarpon and snook in there but what happened was it destroyed shellfish hatchery.

And just, there’s like cave tubes, carboys, raceways, bins, like thrown all over the place. And I had no idea what any of that stuff was. Then that’s all essential hatchery equipment for growing algaes and baby shellfish.

Jessy:

So, how did working with, like, volunteering with those cleaning up those hatcheries get you into the idea of starting your own farm?

Nicolette:

Well, I think it was mainly clams at the time.

Jessy:

Okay.

Nicolette:

But it was kinda that path of, as a kid prior to that, a younger me, be a marine biologist that specializes in dolphins and paints on the side, you know? And getting older, middle school and high school and kinda researching, finding things out more and then I started looking at what aquaculture was. And-

Jessy:

Right.

Nicolette:

I think a lot of Florida kids that love the environment wanna protect it, wanna work for FWC.

And just kinda started researching it. And at the time, um, biofuel was up and coming. Ornamentals for the aquarium trade so you’re not taking from the wild populations. Stock enhancement for finfish shellfish and like, and, you know, mangroves and other shoreline plants. And then, food, essentially like how we are farming now, using the local natural environment to grow a sustainable food product.

I grew up on the Indian River Lagoon and went to Florida Tech. So, pretty much my entire life up until like after I graduated college was like, on the lagoon within 30 minutes in some capacity.

Jessy:

So, for those of us who may be unfamiliar with oyster farming, it could conjure up images of oysters hanging out in a cow fields but I don’t think that’s how that works. (laughs).

So, how do you guys run your oyster farms? Like what does that mean? Do you put, do you just put out oyster babies on the bottom and hope that they survive? Do you like, rotate them out? Do you put them inter tidal, sub tidal? Like what, what, like how do your farms operate?

Sam, can you tell us a little bit about what you do?

Sam:

So Nicolette and I actually do pretty similar styles of oyster farming. It’s called off-bottom oyster aquaculture.

So, on-bottom oyster aquaculture has been around for thousands of years. I mean, the Romans were doing it where they would collect wild oyster seed called spat, and they would move it into little rock pools or just areas where they can control the growth a little more.

Jessy:

Yeah.

Sam:

But they would grow it just right there on the bottom. And that type of oyster farming has been around, it still exists in the United States to this day.

But you don’t have so much control over the oysters life cycle and you can’t really keep the barnacles off or you can’t keep the blue crabs off those are predators that are, can just wipe a bag out from-

Jessy:

Right.

Sam:

…the small seeds but the gear we use is floating on the surface. So, it keeps it away from all those predators on the bottom. It keeps the oysters in bags where we can control the density of how many oysters are in there, and we can control the location of where they’re growing.

So, up on the surface, they’re getting lots of nutrients, they’re getting the phytoplankton, they’re getting oxygen and they’re getting that protection from the predators, but they’re also getting wave action. So, the added benefit of growing them like we do, is the oysters are constantly being moved around, which kind of tumbles them up and it shapes them and it creates that premium kind of raw bar product that both Nicolette and I market.

Jessy:

Kinda with like the smooth polished shell almost. I always feel like I notice that in restaurants when I get like oysters, it’s just, they’re very smooth and nice looking (laughs).

Sam:

If the farmer did it right. I think-

Jessy:

Okay, there you go-

Sam:

…that’s caveat there.

Jessy:

They’re usually your oysters I’m eating, so I would say you’re doing it right.

Sam:

Well, thank you.

Jessy:

(laughs). So, Nicolette, yours is similar then you also use the free-floating bags and the tumble method?

Nicolette:

So, that’s actually an intertidal method.

Jessy:

Oh, okay.

Nicolette:

I’m mainly using out on the farm, four bag floating cages. So, four bags will fit into a cage. So, like Sam was mentioning, they tumble around, they hit each other to create that nice deep cup.

Jessy:

I mean, I feel like that segues perfectly into my next question is what does an average day look like for you? (laughs)

Is it jumping off of boats and shaking up oyster shells? Or like, what are we talking about here?

Nicolette:

I don’t think there’s really an average day.

And I feel like every day there’s a pivot if, you know, we have certain days, well, we’re harvesting oysters for market product, and then all of our daily in-betweens of maintaining gear, cleaning gear, splitting oyster, size grading ’em.

But then there’s running a business too. And as your business is growing where you’re building an amazing crew on the farm. And then we’re being allocated elsewhere, you know, sales, fixing things, bringing the boats in and stuff like that. So… (laughs)

Jessy:

Yeah. Sam, are you seeing that? That your average day, maybe not so average other than some boat issues, but as a business owner, are you getting pulled away from what you started this for to be out on the water and more into like business operations?

Sam:

Not really. I think I’ve been-

Jessy:

Lucky (laughs).

Sam:

…I’ve been pretty lucky, I think for sure. I mean, of course, there’s the business administration that goes along with it the sales is a big part. I think my customers have been really great. Uh, some of the restaurants I work with and some of the distributors I work with, they make that side of the business really easy for me. So, I pretty much have a really strong base of customers that keep me busy, but that means I’m busy on the farm versus busy in the office, which I love.

That’s of course one of the reasons why I started it was so that I could be out on the farm. So, I mean, my daily work looks pretty different every day, but it, in, the broad sense, I’m out there pretty much trying to keep my oysters clean. Trying to keep them organized, trying to keep the big ones together, the small ones together.

We’ll run ’em through a tumbler to make sure they’re getting clean, that they’re staying organized, but we’re also flipping all of our cages up.

So, we mentioned that they’re floating. They also have this cool feature that you can flip all of your floating gear so that the oysters are out of the water. And we simulate the tide by doing that.

Jessy:

Oh, nice. Okay.

Sam:

And, we’re trying to hit a premium market, so the oysters do have to be pretty.

And so, they can’t be covered in barnacles, they can’t be covered in algae. And so, in order to actually have an efficient farm, when we’ve got hundreds of thousands, if not millions of oysters out in the water we can’t just be cleaning up every single oyster all year round.

Jessy:

Right, right.

Sam:

We have to have some bulk cleaning method. And so, for that, we flip our cages up and we’ll leave during winter especially, we’ll leave the oysters just out of the water for 24 hours plus.

And the sun will bake off the little baby barnacles and whatever else we don’t want growing on there. And that is part of the fun work that we have to do at least once a week usually. And it’s cathartic, you know, when you see the whole farm up and then you see the whole farm down.

Jessy:

Yeah (laughs).

I’ll have to keep an eye out for that next time I’m up in the lagoon and see if I can tell whether your farm is out or in the water. (laughs)

So, one of the things, I feel like I should have mentioned this at the beginning, but I think it’s really cool that Sam, you are in the northern end of the lagoon, you are right up there at Mosquito Lagoon.

And then Nicolette, you’re in the very southern part of the lagoon. Right?

So, do you think that the location, location, location, location, does it really differ at all in terms of salinity or water clarity or taste of your oysters? Um, are we gonna have to do an oyster flight between the two?

Sam:

Oh, I think for sure.

Jessy:

Twist my arm. I would love that.

Nicolette:

Oh, yeah.

Jessy:

Have you noticed that, are there any like differences between salinity, water quality taste, et cetera from your oysters in the northern versus the southern?

Nicolette:

Our oysters are similar in flavor profile our oysters also look similar, but Sam and I use very similar practices and very stringent desiccating or flipping protocols that’s all the farmer upkeeping and maintaining their crop.

Where we’re located is just south of the Sebastian Inlet and north of Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge. So, we do get all that tidal flushing twice a day and we’re closer towards, on the Pelican Island side.

So, we get more of that flushing from the Atlantic than we do where our nursery is on the complete opposite side of the lagoon. So, when we get rain, we’re more susceptible to a decrease in salinity there from the Sebastian River, which is north of us than out where the farm is that depending on the tide the salinity stays higher out by the farm from the water coming in and out of the inlet.

Jessy:

Sam, what about you? Like, do you feel we don’t really have a lot of tidal flushing up here in Mosquito Lagoon, so how do you think like the salinity and the water quality are impacting your oysters?

Sam:

It definitely impacts the salinity of our oyster. I guess our closest inlet is Ponce Inlet.

And, I mean, we still get our daily tidal flows coming through our farm area. So, we are right there by the beginning of the Canaveral National Seashore. And what we’ve noticed is that the salinity almost never goes below 30 parts per 1,000 or grams of salt per liter of water.

And what our customers love about that is that they get the same salty oyster every single time they buy an oyster from us. It doesn’t matter if we had a big rainfall or anything like that there.

I don’t know, you’d probably know better than me, but I don’t think we have too many freshwater sources getting in anywhere near there.

Jessy:

No, the only freshwater source that comes into Mosquito Lagoon is from rainfall and manmade canals pretty much, we don’t have any natural freshwater coming in, which is crazy when you think about it. But yeah, I’ve seen it get up to 36 to 40 parts per 1,000 in the summertime when we haven’t had a good rain in a while.

Sam:

Right. That happened in April and that was pretty tough. We had a rough go about, because that at that level it’s stressing the oysters out.

Jessy:

Right.

Sam:

What we’ve noticed, so, we had some serious issues with that on the farm when it got up to 40 parts per 1,000.

As far as the taste goes, I’m sure beyond them just being salty oysters, I think there probably are some subtle or, and like some complex differences between the taste profiles and Nicolette’s versus my oysters.

I think there’s gotta be different phytoplankton’s growing at different types, times of the year, and that’s gonna affect the flavor profile. I know sometimes we get hit with an algae bloom that we, we’ll get shut down. We won’t be able to sell any oysters for a little while. And I see down south Nicolette’s just pumping them out. I’m like, “Oh man (laughing) maybe I should have started my farm two hours south.”

Nicolette:

I do notice our oysters taste a little bit different during the winter. I feel like a sweeter finish that’s more pronounced than the summer. I’m not positive, but I feel like there’s probably different diatoms that are blooming more during the cooler months than the algae’s during the summer that they’re feeding on, so.

Jessy:

That’s a great point. I didn’t think about how much algae could affect the taste of an oyster. Um, I did know that, you know, algal blooms can shut down farms while everything clears out of the system. But as a flavor profile, that’s pretty interesting. I like that.

Nicolette:

Oh yeah. That’s what they’re eating when they’re filtering out water.

Jessy:

That’s a great point. So, continuing on this thread, where are you guys getting your stock of oysters from? Are you harvesting baby oysters from the wild and putting them in a farm? Or are you getting broodstock locally? I know of some oyster farmers that get their broodstock from other states, but they’re triploids so they’re not breeding with our native populations.

Sam:

The rules on where you can get your seed are so strict in Florida. We’re not allowed to collect anything from the wild and use it on our farm. So, that completely counts that out.

So, we need to get it from a hatcher, we need to get it from the pros who are reproducing broodstock, we call it. So, the females and the males and they’re reproducing them in recirculating systems and then we get what they produce.

And so, we are pretty much at the whim of these companies and it gets tough because there are not a lot of them in Florida.

It’s a young industry. So, hopefully more and more of these hatcheries start popping up. But there is a really good one on the Gulf Coast. You mentioned triploids that can’t reproduce like this. We consider them like seedless oysters.

Jessy:

Yeah.

Sam:

There’s a really good one on the Gulf Coast, but we can only get triploids from them because you can’t take diploids from the Gulf and bring them over to the East Coast.

Jessy:

And diploids can reproduce, right?

Sam:

Diploids can reproduce.

Jessy:

Okay.

Sam:

Like, every wild oyster is a diploid pretty much.

Jessy:

Yeah. Gotcha.

Sam:

So, we could get the triploids from over there thankfully, at least we could get something. The Gulf is even more strict. They can only get oysters from the Gulf. And so, we can also get oysters from hatcheries, for example, in Virginia that use Florida genetics in their reproduction, and then they can ship us down seed and-

Jessy:

Gotcha.

Sam:

…thank goodness we could get that. But it’s just us east coast farmers that could get that.

It’s something actually Nicolette and I are working on with the Florida Shellfish Aquaculture Association. We’re hoping to get some more funding to researchers and universities to grow that knowledge base in that hatchery industry so that we can have really solid seed and consistent in Florida.

Jessy:

Does it matter, like with the seed though, if you’re getting babies from out, like from Virginia, let’s say, and you’re bringing them into the state and you’re growing them out and they are triploids, they’re not going to affect our native populations.

Does that matter genetically when they’re growing in our water and they’re going to taste like our water? Or are you guys preferring to try to stay as local as possible, um, and bring seed from in-state genetics?

Nicolette:

That’s a really good question. Florida has very strict regulations on that import permits, export permits, pathology, vet certificate, ploidy, whether they’re diploids or triploids. And then if that batch of seed tests a 100% diploid or triploid. but from the beginning with Treasure Coast Shellfish, it was really important to me to use to try to get local broodstock from our growing area to use that for the seed that we want.

I really wanted to use both diploid and triploid. Diploids to give back to the local environment where we don’t really see oysters setting anywhere except on the farm and on our gear now.

But, uh, (laughs) over the past five years, we’re seeing it more. Um, but we are planting diploids, so they are spawning and reproducing. And we actually saw a mass spawn in our nursery this year, which was super awesome.

But, I’ve been working with oyster seed holding in Virginia. It was the only hatchery that would do a specialty spawn and not require a minimum of a million oysters.

But oyster seed holding had an interest in doing an east coast Florida line so I provided diploid broodstock from our growing area to them, and we’re on, I think the fourth generation for triploid and the fifth generation for diploid.

Jessy:

That is awesome. I had no idea that was happening. I literally thought that all the oysters that were being farmed were like out of state broodstock coming in as triploids. So, the fact that you guys are trying to focus on growing these oysters that can reproduce in your farms with local genetics to give back is just chef’s kiss.

That is amazing work to give back to the ecosystem in addition to your business. So, I love that.

Sam:

It also makes total sense for growth that when we’re planting the seed that has local genetics, it grows so much better. I’ve gotten seed at some point that didn’t have local genetics.

Jessy:

Mm-hmm.

Sam:

…or maybe it only had one parent that had local genetics and they just, they just did not grow well.

We have our very specific growing parameters. We have that high salinity and high temperature, so we really need an oyster that can handle that. Some oysters will never see more than 20 parts per thousands in parts of the country. And we’ll never see waters over 80 degrees, but Nicolette’s BS my water, we get into the 90s during summer and we get we get to 40 parts per 1,000.

So, hopefully we could have oyster that’s genetically situated that it can actually survive those situations. And what we found is, or what I’ve found on my farm is that the local genetics are fantastic for that. But I think what’s also happened is that a lot of other farmers up and down the East Coast have found out that this Florida line is fantastic.

So, the Florida line of oysters is actually selling out in farms-

Jessy:

Oh no. (laughs)

Sam:

…in North Carolina and like all these-

Nicolette:

Virginia, yeah.

Sam:

Yeah. To me it’s like, “Come on. At least give us the, like the first batch in everything.”

Jessy:

Yeah. Right. (laughs).

Sam:

But, uh, or at least give Nicolette the first batch, the broodstock came from her, you know. (laughs).

Jessy:

Yeah. So, you mentioned heat index as being one of the issues, the salinity being another issue. So, what are some of the predators and biological threats that you guys deal with that you need to kind of mitigate for in your farms?

Nicolette:

Barnacles and crabs.

Jessy:

Simple, I love it. (laughs)

Sam:

The stone crabs are really an issue. Like, if you have stuff on the bottom, they’re so powerful with that claw for us. They can snip through our high-density polyethylene bags, get in and pulverize the oysters.

And we had actually up here in our part of the lagoon, I think to date the worst injury. One of the other farmers got grabbed through his dive boot, it cut through his hard plastic dive boot into his Achilles tendon. Uh, and a stone crab just took him out for two weeks.

Jessy:

Ooh.

Sam:

And so, we’ve had stingrays hit us and all sorts of other stuff, but in the shark bite capital of the world, the worst injury that happened on our oyster farm… stone crab. To me that’s hilarious.

Jessy:

That’s why we always wear closed toed shoes and you walk with a purpose in the lagoon. (laughs)

Nicolette:

That stingray shuffle.

Jessy:

Stingray shuffle. Yeah. They teach us that in school. Right? Stingray shuffle.

Sam:

The barnacles are just the worst issue on the farm. It is so hard to deal with barnacles in the summer. I mean they will turn our oysters into snowballs like you-

Jessy:

Wow. Okay.

Sam:

…you can’t see any oyster anymore for some reason. And I think this is kind of the curse of the floating gear too, is that the exact location where our oysters stay in the water, I think is exactly where planktonic barnacles are just floating before they set on something.

Jessy:

Yeah.

Sam:

And they just love our gear and they love our oysters. And so, that, we try to flip up often enough for the sun to kill off the baby barnacles. But we also don’t wanna kill our oysters so we can’t flip up too long during the summer and next thing you know it, you miss one flip or you just time it slightly wrong. And I’ve got rows and rows of oysters where I’m gonna have to individually scrape all of them because they’re just covered in barnacles.

Jessy:

So yeah, this sounds like a really easy career path that you guys took (laughs).

So, you get the baby oysters, you are successful in growing them up through all of the trials and tribulations too. Yeah, fingers crossed-

Nicolette:

(laughs)

Jessy:

…to these delicious briny oysters. How long does that take about? And then where do you sell them to? Do you sell ’em direct to consumer or is your bread-and-butter kind of with the restaurants? Um, how do you get your oysters out there into the community?

Sam:

So, part of the beauty of farming these oysters in Florida is they grow faster than pretty much anywhere else in the country. That’s one of the huge benefits to the locations of our farms. It can take to get like that three-inch oyster that, like my SharkBite is usually around a three-inch oyster. I think Nicolette’s gold doubloons are right around that size. That might take three years to get that big in Maine.

But if you grow it down in Florida from, maybe you get like a six millimeter seed, it can get to that size in as little as six months-

Jessy:

Wow. Okay.

Sam:

…sometimes quicker. But like, it’s usually like the shell is solid and you can shuck it well after six months.

Jessy:

Gotcha. Where do you sell them to then?

Sam:

So, once we get them up to that market size, I mean my favorite is just selling it directly to restaurants. I have so many good relationships with chefs that we’ll harvest that morning and we will go deliver same day to like certain chefs around Florida and they love it and their customers love it.

Jessy:

Yeah.

Sam:

So, that’s one of my favorite things about this farm is building those relationships and like we’ll go into some of these restaurants and we’ll be treated like VIPs and that’s really neat, that’s heart-warming, that’s fulfilling in what we do.

But we also do have our distributors ’cause, I can’t personally drive them up to Savannah or Atlanta or New Orleans-

Jessy:

Right. (laughs)

Sam:

So, we do have to have our distributors and they’re awesome too. So those relationships we built over time and we’ll, I’ll have a semi-truck pull up in front of my house and I’ll load up a pallet right into the back of it.

Jessy:

And so, Nicolette, what about you? How long, do your oysters take the same amount of time about six months to grow?

Nicolette:

Yeah. If you asked me that question like three years ago, I would’ve said six to 12 months, but we’ve had years with drought and stuff. So, on average, I would say over the past five years, it’d be 8 to 18 months.

Jessy:

So, they’re grown, they’re sent off to the restaurants. I’m going to the restaurant tonight, wherever, I don’t know where yet, but somewhere where you guys have oysters. I’m eating oysters tonight. I get it dozen on the half shell. How do you think like eating farmed oysters is having a positive impact on the lagoon?

Like, I wanna feel good while I’m eating my oysters. Do you feel that eating farmed oysters would have a positive impact on lagoon health?

Sam:

For sure. I think especially if you go somewhere in New Smyrna, there’s a lot of restaurants that work closely with the Marine Discovery Center, with the Shuck & Share Program. So, that oyster shell that you just ate is actually gonna be recycled by the Marine Discovery Center and it will go right back into the lagoon after a few months as a restoration reef.

So, in that sense, it’ll absolutely be good for the lagoon, but also just ordering farmed oysters, especially if it’s from the lagoon is gonna be good for the lagoon. Even if that shell never makes it back, because you’re supporting us, you’re supporting the local farmers who we’re filtering tens of millions of gallons every single day.

I mean, we can show you exactly how many oysters we have in the water at any given time and exactly how big they are at any given time. And if people keep buying our oysters, that means we could plant more next year. And we can keep growing the farm and hopefully expand and hopefully we get more farmers in the lagoon because it… I think it’s such this beautiful thing where a person can be good for the environment, but they can also make a living doing it and people get to enjoy the product too. It’s, it’s kind of like a win-win-win. I love it.

Nicolette:

Mm-hmm.

Jessy:

I like that. (laughs)

Nicolette:

Our farms are having such a positive impact.

Yes, the stone crabs and blue crabs are predators for us, but I mean, and spiny lobsters, those are commercially viable. Those are commercial species too.

So, I mean, with the loss of seagrass and the farm creating that habitat that is also giving back where we could have commercial fishermen, again, being able to make a living off of those species again-

Jessy:

Right. Right.

Nicolette:

That’s my favorite part is just seeing, ’cause it was this desolate area.

And how quickly organisms were recruiting and thriving and reproducing. And the farms are having an amazing impact well beyond just the oysters and the clams filtering the water.

Sam:

Yeah, that’s such a great point. I mean, oysters don’t just stop being a keystone species just because they’re in our cages, you know. The biodiversity is really improving by our farms.

Jessy:

Absolutely. Yup. Providing food, shelter, habitat, everything. I love oysters so much for that.

And in addition to eating your delicious oysters, how can your customers live lagoon friendly? Like can you give us a tip or a trick that you’ve learned from your years out on the water that can help us be better stewards for the lagoon?

Sam:

Can you please stop fertilizing your lawns?

But I also feel like maybe the people who are listening probably already don’t fertilize their lawns. That might be an obvious one.

Jessy:

(laughs) That’s always a good reminder though, you know to live Florida friendly and plant those Florida friendly plants if you can and reduce your use of fertilizer.

Nicolette:

And definitely just, you know, pick up after yourselves. We’ll get together, we’ll go out on the boats and go to the island and we’ll pick up trash then we’ll barbecue or we will go spearfishing ahead of time and we’ll cook out and pull some oysters. And we’ll walk the island that we’re on that day and pick up trash cause it’ll end up in the water.

Sam:

Yeah. And maybe hold others accountable, or try to educate others. If you see your neighbor pumping their lawns with fertilizer or doing something, they might not know that runoff can lead to harmful algae blooms in the lagoon then can lead to other worse problems.

And hold your municipalities accountable. There are some municipalities that are still putting quite a bit of runoff and septic runoff into the lagoon when there’s like storms.

Jessy:

Yeah.

Sam:

But hold your municipalities accountable and make sure everything in your town that’s going in the water you can sleep at night, you know, you can feel good about.

Jessy:

Absolutely.

Well, to end on a good note, as oyster farmers, I’m sure that you have to test the product.

So, I grew up, I went to high school in South Carolina and my favorite way to eat in oyster is in a good old-fashioned oyster roast. You put it on the grill with a wet burlap sack, and you steam those babies open. And with a cold beer, it’s just, ugh, pristine way to eat an oyster. So, what is your favorite way that you guys shuck and eat your stuff? Sam, if you wanna go first?

Sam:

Sure so if I’m eating my own oysters, I’ve had thousands of my own oysters.

I love them just straight up, just raw. Just, you really get a new note every single time. Like, they don’t always taste the same. They’re gonna taste a little different with every season. So, I love that. I love being able to taste the lagoon, taste the ocean, and feel like I’m in the lagoon wherever I’m currently eating a SharkBite, you know, I feel like I’m right back in the water. So, I like just having them straight up.

But then after I’ve had like five or six, then I’ll put some hot sauce on ’em. And I love doing a mignonette. I do a mignonette developed by a chef, from Hog Island Oyster Farm in California called Hogwash. And it’s just a great mignonette. I highly recommend it to anybody who likes oysters.

Jessy:

(laughs) Nicolette, what about you?

Nicolette:

I like ’em raw, naked, nothing on ’em. Just like Sam said, you just taste the little differences throughout the year.

Jessy:

That’s good to know.

Well, thank you guys so much for joining us today. We really appreciate your insight on oyster genetics, which I’ll have to talk to you guys offline ’cause I would love to nerd out about that with you.

But before we leave, where can the listener learn more about your operations?

Nicolette, can you tell us where to find you?

Nicolette:

On our website at treasurecoastshellfish.com.

We do have a link on Sereia Films. Eating Out on the Hunt did an amazing episode on us.

And follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. I feel like Sam and I both post a lot to Instagram, our day-to-days and what’s going on and the cool critters we find.

So, and when you’re out, please ask the restaurants for our oysters. The more people that ask for ’em and want them, the chefs will reach out.

Jessy:

And Sam, what about you?

Sam:

Yeah, you could find more information about our farm out on sharkbiteoysters.com.

And more often we’re on Instagram @sharkbiteoysters. We’ll be posting goofy videos and showing you what we do out there on the farm and living the dream out there.

Jessy:

Awesome. Well, thanks guys so much.

Sam:

Thank you so much.

Nicolette:

Thank you.

Jessy:

Thank you guys so much for listening today. If you enjoy these discussions about the Indian River Lagoon, please like and subscribe to this podcast wherever you find your podcasts.

To learn more about the IRLNEP, how you can get involved in tips on living lagoon friendly, or to purchase One Lagoon merchandise, visit us at onelagoon.org.

Also, our newly redesigned Indian River Lagoon license plate is now available at your local tag office.

To stay informed about Lagoon News and upcoming events like our monthly What’s Up in the Watershed webinar, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube @OneLagoon.