Episode 3: Restoring the Olympia Oyster

Preview (00:00)

Dick Vanderschaaf: So there’s a long, long history of Olympia oysters being the consumed oyster on the West Coast, until we just ate ourselves right through them. And so the question is, well, what did we lose with this native oyster? Well, we lost a lot.

Introduction (0:28)

Kaitlyn Rich: You’re listening to Tending the Tides. I’m Kaitlyn Rich.

Megan Foucht: And I’m Megan Foucht. At Ecotrust, we often talk about nature states, areas defined not by lines on a map, but rather by the connection between people and place, regions where geology, weather patterns, types of soil, bodies of water, communities of plants and animals and people come together to form a tapestry that shapes culture and shared meaning. When Ecotrust was founded, we defined the region where we work by historic runs of Pacific salmon, that keystone species that connects the ocean with inland waterways and landscapes and to the people who live here. Early in our history, Ecotrust mapped the relationship between the loss of salmon habitat and its impact on the languages and cultures of Native people.

Kaitlyn Rich: The Olympia oyster, Ostrea Lurida, is another species that tells a story about people, place and connection. 150 years ago, populations of this humble bivalve were nearly wiped out in Oregon. Today, on Tending the Tides, we’re looking at how researchers, chefs, scientists and farmers are working toward restoration.

Segment 1: A natural history (1:40)

Steve Rumrill: Olympia oysters were historically pretty abundant up and down the West Coast, and their numbers have plummeted and to the point where we consider them at risk.

Megan Foucht: That’s Steve Rumrill, retired Shellfish Program leader at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. As Steve said, the historic range of Olympia oysters was vast, stretching from Mexico’s Baja Peninsula all the way north to southern Alaska. Not only do these oysters represent culture and cuisine, they are an indelible part of shaping near shore environments.

Steve Rumrill: If you go down to Coos Bay and look at dredge spoils, they’re artificial dread spoil islands in the middle of the estuary, and the northernmost island has a whole beach, almost exclusively Olympia, oyster shells—very rare—but those are shells that have been dropped or dredged up from the bottom and deposited into this dredge spoil island. Same thing. A lot of the dredge spill on the marshlands has lots and lots of Olympia oysters mixed into them.

Olympia oysters, you know, their natural history as a reef-builder contributes to stabilization of the shoreline. Imagine these multi-generations of Olympia oysters growing upon each other and, hopefully, in a rate that can keep tabs with the rates of sedimentation, but they’ll serve to stabilize the shoreline. Help to provide complex three-dimensional habitat that’s of use by amphipods, and polychaete worms, and shrimp, and small crabs, and fishes get in there as well. They love those intricacies and such. And shorebirds and seabirds get in there and feed upon them as well on these things. So they’re, they’re really an engineering species.

Kaitlyn Rich: As Steve said, Olympia oysters are one of nature’s engineers. But they don’t act alone. Chef Jack Strong, a Siletz tribal member and the Executive Chef at the Allison Inn in Newburgh, spoke about both the historic abundance of Olympia oysters, their importance to Native peoples, and how this relationship is still evident in Oregon’s coastal landscape.

Jack Strong: I think it’s a really important oyster, uh, to highlight as much as you can and then support, but then also it, it tells a story of for me, coastal peoples and our reliance on, and how we were sustained by not only oysters, but other shellfish and mussels and how that really was a part of life for coastal tribes, which I relate to being from the coast.

You know the middens, the shell middens that are on the coast, those are history. A midden is usually, and my understanding would be,  after shellfish is harvested and basically the meat’s been removed the life has, been transferred. then it’d be the shells. So then the shells are dumped into this pile and just repeatedly over and over again for years and years and years. And then it just builds and compresses on itself. It can show the layers of thousands of years of shellfish that’s been, the shells have been just continually dumped in that one spot. It’s almost like a living museum in some ways, I guess, because it’s not like it’s being encased in glass and protected by security. This is something that’s just part of life, and so it’s important, because it keeps us connected to place, to peoples, to where you are.

Megan Foucht: In the last episode, we talked about the history of the commercial oyster industry: how Olympia oysters became over-harvested by white settlers and were replaced by Pacific oysters as the main oyster for the commercial industry. Not only were there local commercial oyster harvesters, oystermen from San Francisco would sail from California to Oregon to capitalize on the bounty. One of the primary points of harvest was Yaquina Bay.

This was a time period of significant displacement for Native peoples across Oregon, including on the coast, with tribal peoples forcibly relocated by the U.S. government to reservations. Yaquina Bay was originally part of the million-acre Coast Indian Reservation, established in 1855, and the site where at least 4,000 people from coastal and inland tribes were relocated. Just 10 years after the establishment of the Coast Indian Reservation, in 1865, a presidential decree removed Yaquina Bay from the boundaries of the reservation, due in part to the commercial interest in oyster harvesting.

By 1894, the government dismantled the Coast Reservation and opened the coastline to white settlers. You could say that Olympia oysters were one of the first of Oregon’s resources—before timber or salmon—to be exploited on this large scale and to be depleted. And the history of that exploitation is tied to the history of displacement of tribal peoples as well. Olympia oysters still represent regional connection, but the story is changing: from one of exploitation to collaborations that span geographies and cultures.

Segment 2: Diving into restoration (6:46)

Maylin Chavez: Growing up in Baja, I worked and was around seafood my entire life, so seafood has always been those ingredients that really drew me and really kind of gave me a sense of place and nostalgia.

Kaitlyn Rich: That’s Chef Maylin Chávez. Chef Maylin is a tireless advocate for not only eating oysters, but also the important relationship between oysters and environmental stewardship. Her passion for oysters started with Olympia oysters, or Olys for short.

Maylin Chávez: I’ve been doing this for, I wanna say, a little bit over 15 years. I started off in a different career path. When I was in college, I studied criminal law, and also I have a master’s in behavioral science and leadership development. So I did a lot of policy work around human rights around the environment. So when I transitioned into this career, this chef world, this cooking world, I wanted to do the same but with this different subject matter.

I found my way through some oyster farmers and met really these incredible people in Southern California that I just became really, really intrigued and really admiring their work and what they were trying to do: not only to provide these beautiful little animals to restaurants and chefs, but also contributing to the local environment.  They were growing Olympias in this beautiful estuary in Carlsbad, and they were trying to restore them to really identify ways that they can help grow and revitalize these little oysters that were native to the West Coast. So I was just immediately drawn to that, and I wanted to be a part of that whole movement.

Kaitlyn Rich: Here in Oregon, work to restore Olympia oysters and their habitats is decades in the making. Part of the success relies on that regional approach: applying expertise and lessons learned from efforts and initiatives in Washington and California to the unique challenges that exist here in Oregon. Here’s Steve:

Steve Rumrill: At-risk species, you know, have every right to be alive, so they’re worth restoring, in their own right. But as an academic scientist and fisheries manager, they’re also a species that poses great opportunities for recovery and species where directed human activities can make a difference. We’ve certainly seen that over the past couple of decades in the success of Olympia oyster restoration projects in Washington, California and Oregon.

The Puget Sound Restoration Fund is really the pioneering group on the West Coast, focusing in on the diversity of habitats in the Salish Sea. And then, more recently, the native Olympia oyster Collaborative has really been now, a new group that we formed up about six, seven years ago that focuses throughout the bio geographic range, from southern Alaska and British Columbia all the way down to Mexico.

Kaitlyn Rich: A critical first step in restoration efforts was to figure out if it was possible to re establish Olympias in the bays and estuaries of Oregon.

Steve Rumrill: I worked for 20 years as the research coordinator for the South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve, a special estuarine marine protected area, watershed protected area down in Coos Bay. Way back in 2008, 2009, which is by my math, about 18 years ago, obtained financial support from NOAA to begin Olympia oyster restoration work in that South Slough. And the South Slough is a tidal inlet of the Coos Estuary located down on the southern Oregon coast. And for that project, we were recognizing that Olympia oysters had recently become reestablished in the Coos Estuary, but they were not present in the South Slough tidal inlet, which is part of the Coos Estuary. And we were asking the question, “Why?” Olympia oyster shells were abundant in the Coos Estuary and they were spotty along the shoreline of the South Slough, but we couldn’t find any evidence of live Olympia oysters in the South Slough.

A graduate student named David Stick was doing analysis of the genetic signatures of Olympia oysters throughout their biogeographic range, trying to reconstruct where did they go, where did they come from, how are they related? So the analysis of molecular genetics was going on and that revealed that the Olympia oysters in the Coos Estuary were genetically identical to those way up north in Willapa Bay. And that observation provided us with support for the hypothesis that the Olympia oysters in Coos Bay had been inadvertently, non-deliberately reestablished from Willapa Bay, as part of hitchhiker from the commercial mariculture transport from Willapa Bay down into Coos Bay. So we posed up a science question: Are there any differences in the survival and growth between those oysters who have been brought from the north, from Willapa Bay down into Coos Bay, from those that had become recently established in Coos Bay? And in particular, is there any evidence for local adaptation?

So I think we out planted about one-and-a-half million Olympia oysters immediately adjacent to the boundary of the South slough, and we followed those outplants for about a year and a half and monitored them over that time period. The measurements over that next year showed higher survival and higher rates of growth for the progeny from the locally-adopted oysters that gave us a feel that well they may be then able to adapt their their growth rate, their local physiologies based on local conditions that Olympia oysters are pretty versatile and adapt well to local conditions.

Dick Vanderschaaf: When I first heard about it, back in the late 1990s it was a rare species that was listed by the Oregon Natural Heritage Program, who categorizes and catalogs all sorts of rare species, animals, plants, etc, is one of the few rare species they had listed for for the ocean, in this case, estuaries.

Megan Foucht: That’s Dick Vanderschaaf, the Associate Conservation Director for the Oregon Coast and Marine program with the Nature Conservancy. As we heard from Steve, there was a growing awareness that it was possible to reintroduce and grow populations of Olympia oysters in Oregon’s estuaries. And as we’ll hear from both Steve and Dick, one key to ensuring the success of these restoration efforts is continued partnership with oyster growers.

Dick Vanderschaaf: There’s a long, long history of Olympia oysters being the consumed oyster on the West Coast until we just ate ourselves right through them. And so the question is, well, what did we lose with this native oyster? Well, we lost a lot. There’s not like there’s a dozen different species of oysters. There’s only one spanning this entire West coast, which is kind of remarkable.

I think, when I hear the phrase restoration economy, I think that a lot of us at least, are perceiving that, oh, there’s a certain business set up just to do restoration work. And in some ways that’s probably true on very large systems like forest systems, but out in pure coastal ecosystem, such as estuaries or in the near coastal area, we probably can’t afford to do just straight up restoration. So I think the restoration economy is built more into the working economies that already exist on the coast. And so, for instance, you mentioned the idea of working on Olympia oysters, and the restoration economy built around that is really going to be built into the existing oyster farming industry, or the existing aquaculture that is ongoing. And so we have lots of work to do, generations of work to do, and I think we just have to learn how now to build restoration into these existing businesses.

I think that’s the sweet spot, is finding some of the techniques we can employ to bring these native species into a cultivated seascape, if you will, and then again, relying upon, in this case, the operators who are very skilled at growing things such as oysters.

Steve Rumrill: I work directly with the commercial mariculture operators at Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery, their commercial operation certainly is a major part of our restorative conservation aquaculture is we don’t have the ability, we just don’t have the tanks and the infrastructure and plumbing and pumps and all of that kind of stuff to do that on our own. So conservation aquaculture activities rely heavily on commercial operators to do that behind the scenes, important husbandry work that’s essential for for any type of mariculture.

Megan Foucht: So there are these growing partnerships and networks and a lot of expertise behind restoration efforts—folks have overcome a lot of hurdles. However, one unseen challenge would impact restoration and industry alike.

Dick Vanderschaaf: You know, we were successful at putting oysters out in the Bay. We were successful for a year or two of having a few, some recruitment, as they say, some populations growing again on these oysters. But something did come along in 2007, 2008 that really stopped all of us. And that was there was this massive die-off of oysters that started—was first recognized in the shellfish hatchery. And it actually affected any natural recruitment of young oysters or larvae out in the Bay as well, which would be for the Olympia oysters. And we, in the end, learned that the issue was ocean acidification. The corrosiveness of ocean waters had swept into the Bay. And basically the lowering of the pH of ocean waters, even a tiny, small amount, was just enough to upset the delicate chemical balance that basically precluded young oyster larvae from creating shells. This affected the hatchery dramatically.

The hatchery lost all their production for a couple years. It affected the Olympia oysters that were trying to naturally reproduce in the Bay. I think it was a real a-ha moment to put it mildly for the fact that ocean water conditions are really affecting inshore, in estuaries, along the Oregon coast to such an effect that it was going to impact this native species, as well as this thriving industry as well.

The shellfish hatchery, which raises larvae, went through a lot of changes to figure out how best to get around this, so they could still create, still grow larvae for production, which they ship around the world, basically, or certainly around the West Coast, for seed for other oyster growers. And they now have changed their production dramatically to work around this concept of bad water. When we have sustained upwelling and this corrosive water is coming on shore into the estuaries, they’re now monitoring their water with real-time monitoring. Figure out when they close off their inlets to retain the water they have, which is quote “good water,” and to keep the corrosive water out of their system so they can continue to grow oyster larvae that they will ship around. So they have a controlled system, the hatchery does, they can do these things. We, who are working with natural regeneration of Olympia oysters, for instance, we don’t have a control system. We have a system that’s out in the ocean, or out in the estuary, rather. So we are the mercy of the ocean acidification occurring out there in the ocean.

So ocean acidification is a very real threat. It could have a real impact if left unchecked, and it, combined with our natural occurring upwelling, means that it is something that we have to live with now.

Megan Foucht: Ocean acidification is a big deal, and it should be one of the main causes of ocean acidification is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from human activities. The restoration of Olympia oysters is also up against invasive species like the European Green crab, which preys on shellfish. The people working on restoration also have to make sure their efforts aren’t hindering other restoration efforts like those for eel grass. And all the while, they have been experimenting with novel approaches to improving survivability. While greater commercial availability of Oregon-harvested Olympia oysters may be a long way off, it’s never too soon to imagine what that future looks like.

Segment 3: Eating Olys (19:55)

Kaitlyn Rich: One of the questions worth asking with regard to any kind of economic development is, “Who benefits?” In the case of developing the aquaculture sector in Oregon, we have the opportunity to enable economic justice when we think about the initial rise of the oyster industry that led to further displacement of tribal peoples. What if instead we could use the growth of the industry now to benefit tribal communities?

Jack Strong: It’d be great if we could have more Olympia oysters available, where right now it’s not as available and I have to really make a purpose to get it in. It’d be the double bonus cherry on top is if it was a tribal business that was bringing that to life and be able to support this great kind of iconic native foods as well as a tribal entity. That’d be like the win-win.

So access to tribal foods is always have an issue. I know, growing up as a kid, like my uncle went clamming and digging for clams all the time. When you’re a kid, you’re like, I don’t wanna get up at four or five in the morning, and it’s cold, and you don’t know until you do it once. And that’s something that I’ve learned over the years is that I would like to have tribal communities to have access to foods, say, before someone at a restaurant as an example. For me, that’s kind of like, that would be a goal: is more access for community members of all tribes. And then to be able to highlight those on menus more frequently. That would be ideal.

Steve Rumrill: We know how to grow Olympia oysters. The financial incentive is not really there to do mariculture, but the technical side of growing Olympia oysters has been generally figured out. So when they reach the point where people are willing to pay for them, for that unique experience of eating Olympia oysters, we’d likely see that continue.

Kaitlyn Rich: As mentioned earlier, oyster farms contribute a lot to the restoration work for the Olympia oyster, but in most cases, this doesn’t return a profit to the growers. So another piece of the restoration economy puzzle here might be some kind of new financing, like a stewardship credit that would support continuous acts of restoration and care. We’ll talk more about this idea in later episodes.

Maylin Chávez: No oyster is ever created equal, and they’re all so different, and they are influenced by just all the beautiful, magical biodiversity in the environments that they’re grown in. It’s pretty rad.

Megan Foucht: Each of the folks we interviewed shared their unique culinary encounters with Olympia oysters. But before we get back to Maylin, a quick note here. Because of their status as an at-risk species, it’s actually illegal to harvest naturally-occurring Olympia oysters, either commercially or recreationally in Oregon, so the oysters that folks are talking about eating here are likely coming from Washington farmers. If Olympia oysters are coming from an organ oyster farm, it’s most likely because the spat, those baby oysters, naturally affixed itself to some kind of structure owned by the farm.

Maylin Chávez: This oyster’s so special that it, it takes about five years for it to grow, and it only grows to the size of a sand dollar. So it’s a small little thing, but the flavor profile of this oyster is just insanity. It’s metallic. It’s got like very, a lot of umami. It’s got a huge punch. So they’re very, very special. When I prepare them at the restaurant, or when I when I serve them, which is a very special occasion, because they’re again, they’re not readily available a lot of farms. (I know Chelsea farms in Washington grows them, Hamahama grows them, Taylor Shellfish, but they have a very shorter season.) It’s really, for me, it’s just about presenting them in their original form with nothing on it. I would, I don’t serve any citrus. I don’t serve any lime. I try to really express to people, like, it’s, this is almost like, what I describe it? It’s like, if you’re taking a little like digestif and you just want to taste that little digestif. I always think of like an Olympia oyster is like a little digestif. Even though you may have it before your dinner, it’s like, it’s just like that little bite that just will literally take you on this journey of just incredible flavors, incredible nuances.

You know, when you serve a plate of oysters in front of people, they’re like, “ooh!” Everybody have this little, like initial little smile on their face. It’s like this little giddiness that happens, and that energy kind of translates into this little animal, into this little ingredient and everything around it. So it gives back, not only for you, for your soul, for your body, because it’s always, you know, it’s delicious and nutritious, but it also gives back to the environment in a way that is very unique.

Dick Vanderschaaf: I remember when we were first raising the Olympia oysters, we planted them out one year. Planted means you spread them out into the bay and where you’re going to. And I remember going out there two years later or more, and we were finding oysters the size of a—essentially the shells were maybe the size of a quarter or a little bit, maybe a little bit bigger. I was working with this oysterman named Mark Whitworth, who, not surprisingly, had his oyster shucking knife with him. It’s one of the great things you notice that these folks are more than willing to figure out how things are doing by just opening it up and eating it. So we opened up the oyster very carefully knowing that you keep that cup side down, so you can retain all that great liquid and just having one, just right out there in the Bay, you pulled it off the bottom, and you ate it within 30 seconds and you kinda go, “Wow, that was as fresh as it could ever be”—obviously.  So it just has this perfect little small bite to it, bite-sized, physically, a small bite-sized chunk to it of oyster. It just has this unique tangy metallic taste that doesn’t stay in your mouth in a bad way, but in a good way. And followed with the bit of seawater too, which is always a good thing. So it just had all these things ringing true for me. So you know, I think that clearly that was the best Olympia oyster I ever had.

Jack Strong: I guess my overall approach, I like to highlight these really humble, simple, great quality ingredients. I don’t try to do too much to them. I try to, like, let them speak for themselves. So coming back to the Olympia oyster, I did this dish that was really simple, but it highlighted two really powerful native foods: heirloom tomato and the Olympia oyster. So I just basically had it raw, and then I made like a tomato water gelee, like a little jello kind of, and I cut that out to be the exact size of the oyster. So you had like this, it looked almost look like a glass sheen, kind of disc sitting on top. And then I think at that time, I did some kind of, like wild wood sorrel puree, or something bright green to go on there as well. And then I think that was it. I kept it really simple. I just wanted these two items to play off of each other. And when you ate it together, it was a very I felt like delicate and a finesseful bite. And you know, it’s just one little bite and not very big. That’s probably one of my favorite dishes I’ve done with Olympia oyster.

Steve Rumrill: Olympia oysters have been available to us here now, so I purchased them from the Oregon Oyster Farm, and there I can eat them raw and just get the feel for what do they actually taste like. And I agree they’re tangy, somewhat metallic, maybe that little copper, pungent flavor, kind of similar to raw gathered mushrooms. And I like them, like that raw with just a little bit of fresh lime juice on it. They’re delicious.

Segment 4: Reflection (27:39)

Jed Bowers: What makes me interested in Olys is A, the demand for them and B, that it was the original oyster that was all up and down the West Coast. And I feel like it’d be kind of cool to be able to be part of bringing all these back to Netarts Bay, but there’s a lot of research that I need to do to figure out if it’s smart to do, or if I should do it. Because everything, ultimately, for me as a business owner, it costs money, and so I need to figure out if I’m going to a have a return monetarily, or if it’s something that’s going to benefit the Bay that I my family makes a living off of.

Megan Foucht: Remember Jed Bowers from our last episode? Jed is the owner and operator of Haystack Shellfish Company in Netarts Bay. As you heard from Jed and many others in this episode, the interest in restoring and eating Olys hinges on so many puzzle pieces coming together. Another piece of the puzzle, and what I’m excited about with regard to this and other ocean foods that we’re talking about in this series, is the cultural component, like what Jack Strong shared about tribal community access to tribal foods, prioritizing that access while also building opportunity for tribal businesses. So less about who can pay top dollar and more about reaffirming the rights of tribal people to sustain culture and care for community. I think the nexus of culture and economy is the crux of a lot of what we’re talking about in this series, whether that’s cultures of decision making or food cultures.

Kaitlyn Rich: In the next episode, we’ll be talking about one of my favorite foods: seaweed! Our coworker Emilie Chen will join us for this conversation, and we hope you’ll tune in to hear more about the culture-shaping, economy-growing, ecosystem-defining algae, from where it grows naturally to species that are well adapted to being farmed here in Oregon. All that next time on Tending the Tides.

Alanna Kieffer: So we have Bull kelp, which is, of course, one of my favorites, because it’s what makes up Oregon’s kelp forest. So it can grow, you know, 70 to 100 feet, and it makes these incredibly big and really important ecosystems.

Outro (30:02)

Megan Foucht: This episode was hosted by Megan Foucht and Kaitlyn Rich, edited by Suzie O’Neill, and written by Megan Foucht. Produced by Kaitlyn Rich, Jon Bonkoski, Tyson Rasor, and Emilie Chen. Music by Imagined Nostalgia, Boxwood Orchestra, and Our Many Stars. Illustrations by Tony Sterling and design by Heldáy de la Cruz. This podcast was made possible by our funders at the Builders Initiative. The Builders Ini­tia­tive invests in and col­lab­o­rates with nonprof­its, busi­ness­es, and oth­ers work­ing towards sus­tain­able solu­tions to soci­etal and envi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges. Finally, this podcast is a production of Ecotrust, where we work in partnership at the intersection of equity, economy, and environment. Learn more about Ecotrust at ecotrust.org.