Perhaps no food conveys a sense of place like the oyster. To tip back a Cape May Salt or Forty North Rose Cove and sip its brine is to kiss its native waterway on the lips, in a paraphrase of French poet Léon-Paul Fargue. It is to commune with season and location, a humble creature transformed by salt and time into something far more grand. It is to taste the point where river gives way to sea, the best of two ecosystems colliding.
Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Delaware Bay Oyster
As the sun comes up at Money Island Marina, where the Nantuxent Creek and Delaware Bay come together, ship captains and their crews head out onto the water. Aptly named, Money Island is the epicenter for oystering on Jersey’s west coast, where most of its open-harvest catch is landed. By all accounts, that trade is brisk…
Healthy Barnegat Bay, Healthy Market
When Scott Lennox of Forty North looks out over his newest farm location in the Barnegat Bay, he sees more than a place to grow oysters. He sees the potential to tell a story about the watershed. When you’re steeped in all things Jersey grown, it’s easy to forget that the state can get a bad rap. “Jersey oysters, really?” some say. To that, locals might reply: “It’s your loss.”
Oyster Innovation: Building Reefs, Business, and Community
When fifth-generation bayman Dale Parsons Jr. thinks about the reef he’s building in Little Egg Harbor Bay, he thinks about his 3-year-old daughter. What kind of environment will he leave for her? What will the family business look like, should she take it on? Certainly, the Parsons family, whose work on these waters dates to 1909, has seen its share of changes…
Well before the average 26-year-old has even thought about hitting snooze, Bridgitte Maxwell is up and heading out onto the bay with her Dad, John, and her “Poppop,” Donald, on the Captain Curtis Maxwell, a dredge named for her paternal great-grandfather. You want to see the definition of hustle? Spend time with a rising oysterwoman…
The Barnegat Bay is a muse who holds her secrets close, reserved for the initiated. Even locals can miss the stories submerged within her depths. Case in point: A few years ago, Long Beach Island resident Corinne Ruff was walking the shoreline and got to wondering. Where had all of the oysters gone?
How Rutgers Revitalized an Industry
The next time you dive into a plate of Eastern oysters—the species known as Crassostrea virginica, native to the Eastern Seaboard and Gulf Coast—tip your half-shell to Rutgers before you recycle it. Were it not for the late Harold H. Haskin, university researcher and namesake of the Haskin Shellfish Research Laboratory at the Rutgers Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, that raw bar that just moved into town might not be there…
The Overlooked History of the Bayshore
“Everyone knows about the Chesapeake Bay, and the romanticism of the Chesapeake. But there is definitely a disconnect between people on land and on water, especially along the Delaware Bay.” Rachel Dolhanczyk would know. As curator for the Delaware Bay Museum at the Bayshore Center in Bivalve, she spends her days sharing the stories that reveal the region’s rich history…
Jenn Hall 