How Delaware oysters reappeared on local menus

• There are 343 acres available to lease for shellfish aquaculture in Delaware's Inland Bays, which include Rehoboth, Indian River and Little Assawoman bays.
• Each applicant can lease 5 acres for oysters in Rehoboth or Indian River bays, and 5 acres in Little Assawoman Bay for clams.
• Some experts estimate it will cost about $50,000 just for the equipment needed to farm 1 acre of oysters.
• Only two people have active lease sites as of November 2018.

There are few things more iconically Delmarva than 'picking' freshly steamed blue crabs, Old Bay seasoning sticking to everything in sight while sandy remnants of a day at the beach linger between toes.

Except maybe slurping a briny raw oyster that was bred and cultivated just a few miles away in Delaware's Inland Bays.

For decades that Delaware delicacy has been absent from restaurant menus and many thought it would take years for the state's newly revitalized shellfish aquaculture program to get its sea legs and begin producing enough oysters to sell.

But some of those farmed oysters grew much faster than anyone imagined and were being slurped down this summer.

Marketed as Dewey Beach Selects, these black-striped oysters were the first farmed shellfish grown in Rehoboth Bay, not far from Del. 1, Dewey Beach and the bridge over the Indian River Inlet.

"We were the first ones to sell them," said George Esterling III of Hockessin's George & Sons' Seafood Market & Oyster House. "Everybody loved them. I think the coolest part about it is they were a Delaware oyster."

Sure, Blue Points, Chincoteagues and other popular half-shell varieties will always be in high demand, but having a Delaware oyster option on the menu taps into the trend of eating local and could open up a whole new industry.

Local oysters are a 'huge deal'

While there are only a few so far who have committed to the sometimes-volatile industry, this summer's results show it may be worth the risk.

Esterling and a study by the University of Delaware's Sea Grant program found that people are willing to pay the price for Delaware-sourced seafood.

When the time came to pull those first 1,000 oysters out of the water, Esterling made the trek south and featured the delicacies at his New Castle County eatery. All 1,000 were slurped down within two days and he had to go back down for more, he said.

"It was just a huge deal up our way," he said. 

The thousands of oysters cultivated in cages among the Inland Bays were not expected to grow so fast. Normally, it takes an oyster up to two years to reach market size.

But this summer, some of them grew to slurping size in less than a year. Ideal weather conditions and luck of the genetic draw paid off for those first harvests, aquaculture experts said.

Oysters will clean bay waters

The new shellfish aquaculture program presents an opportunity for new jobs. But experts say it also will improve the quality of those waterways.

"You get a lot out of it in terms of the oysters that are harvested and the water that is filtered and the nutrients that are removed by the bays," said Christopher Bason, executive director of the Delaware Center for the Inland Bays.

Those three bays have been plagued by excess nutrient pollution due to runoff from a variety of sources, including lawn fertilizers, farming and septic systems.

When too many nutrients, like nitrogen and phosphorus, get into natural waterways, they can fuel algae growth and make it difficult for fish, plants and other aquatic life to thrive.

"The algae grows here heavy," said Mark Casey, one of those brave Sussex Countians growing some of the first Delaware oysters. "When it dies at night, it consumes the oxygen and we get the fish kills here in the river. We lower that algae level with the oysters eating the algae."

A grown oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water per day, Bason said. Multiply that by 500,000 oysters per acre, with a maximum of more than 100 acres available for shellfish farming, and that's a lot of bivalve filtration.

"That's special because once excess nutrients get into the bays, they're very hard to get out," he said. "That's why shellfish farming is such an important tool to restoring the quality of the bays."

What began as a slow, bureaucratic process to open up public waterways to a new private industry is now on pace to grow as rapidly as this year's oysters.

Casey has also set up a riverside nursery where new shellfish farmers can get their baby oysters, as well as equipment needed to grow them safely in the bays.

But it is going to take a lot more aquatic farmers for the Inland Bays’ aquaculture program to take hold and be on par with others on the eastern seaboard where people have been farming oysters for decades.

And there is still risk. For instance, freezing temperatures in shallow water can spell disaster for critters and equipment.

Still, Casey foresees the market growing rapidly. He expects 750,000 oysters to be harvested from the Inland Bays next year and two million the year after. 

"If we aren't at 20 million in five years, we haven't succeeded," Casey said. "If you look at other states, it's about a six-year start-up curve for the industry to take off."

That could mean great news for restaurants, but Casey said it will also be great for locals and visitors.

"What it's going to do for fishing is unbelievable," he said. "Every time you turned the cage over, you could grab a softshell [crab], put it in your pocket and tend your oysters. The crabs just love it. And we're covering up with all kinds of shrimp. The habitat that's happening underneath these cages ... it's like setting an artificial reef out."

Delaware's 'white gold'

Delaware has not always been devoid of oysters in these waterways. Casey said his wife's mother and grandfather waded in the Indian River and plucked wild oysters from their bottom-dwelling reefs. 

A few state-maintained reefs exist in Delaware Bay, where commercial harvesters are allowed to take about 11,000 bushels each year. That is nothing compared to the other side of the bay, where New Jersey oystermen could take 124,000 bushels last year.

Because of decades of deteriorating water quality in the Inland Bays, the devastating impacts of a disease that wiped out wild populations and historic poor management, it has been a long time since Delaware profited off an industry considered so valuable that oysters were dubbed "white gold."

Bason said he hopes that by raising oysters, even though they are in cages suspended from the bottom, they will reproduce and release baby oysters into the bay.

"That will help our efforts to restore the wild populations," he said.

Casey, who runs Delaware Cultured Oysters with his family, is focused on the nursery side of the business, but he expects their Indian River varieties – Blue Hen Oysters and Delaware Salts – to join Dewey Beach Selects on menus next year.

Farming shellfish isn’t cheap, which may be why dozens of people who bid on and won aquaculture leases have not started farming yet. Casey said it costs about $50,000 per acre for a good set up of equipment, and that does not include labor, oyster seed, operations or liability insurance.

Delaware may be a little late to the oyster game, but they can learn from what works in other states.

"We're heading into a time where we have technology at our fingertips and we're heading into a new market," said Casey's son Daniel. "States like Virginia and Maryland that have been doing this for years and years and years ... they're not going to be as innovative as we can be."

Contact reporter Maddy Lauria at (302) 345-0608, mlauria@delawareonline.com or on Twitter @MaddyinMilford.

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