on the water | Jenn Hall

Edible Jersey: New Jersey Clams – Boom and Bust . . . and Boom?

September 12, 2018 by jennhallwrites

Especially among outsiders, it’s common to speak of our bay system in the singular. In part, this is because the average person knows little about a secret, watery geography that reads like poetry. West of Holgate, Hither Channel leads to Soldiers Hole, which winds between Story Island and Goodluck Sedge. These hidden maps belong to those in the bay. Yet, estuaries are a varied, subtidal universe, wherein the only constant is change. This includes clams. Read more… Published in the […]

Categories: food & drink, on the water

Edible Jersey: Hard Clam Aquaculture 101

September 12, 2018 by jennhallwrites

Hard clam breeding season is triggered by temperature. As clams awaken from hibernation, they feed vigorously, building stores of sperm or eggs. Aquaculturists manipulate this in the hatchery, replicating nature on an accelerated timeline. The first step is to gather breeders, bring them in, and offer an algae diet. Read more… Published in the Fall 2018 issue

Categories: food & drink, on the water, sustainable & just

NPR’s The Salt: On East Coast Oyster Farms, ‘Women are Rising up from the Bay in a Big Way’

May 16, 2018 by jennhallwrites

As sunrise paints the lower Delaware Bay’s intertidal zone, the mudflats take on a metallic shimmer near Cape May, N.J. As visual poetry, it’s arresting. But the tide is out — and the clock is ticking. The receding water has revealed Sweet Amalia Oysters, so oyster farmer Lisa Calvo and her team get to work. The team hoists plastic mesh bags from rebar racks. They sort the bivalves, shells clinking in rhythm. Only when you draw close to the wader-clad […]

Categories: food & drink, on the water • Tags: oysters

Edible Jersey: Special Report – Oysters – 2018 IACP Award for Narrative Food Writing

July 21, 2017 by jennhallwrites

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 […]

Categories: food & drink, on the water • Tags: farming, oysters

Edible Jersey: The Oyster Farmers – 2018 IACP Award for Narrative Food Writing

July 20, 2017 by jennhallwrites

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? A century back, she learned, a thriving industry lined pockets, filled plates and supported a vast reef system and healthy Barnegat Bay. As on the Delaware, overharvesting […]

Categories: food & drink, on the water • Tags: farming, oysters

Edible Jersey: The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Delaware Bay Oyster – 2018 IACP Award for Narrative Food Writing

July 20, 2017 by jennhallwrites

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. Peering over the dock from his rustic baymen’s shop, Marina manager Bruce Muenker will tell you that a lot of profit is generated at […]

Categories: food & drink, on the water • Tags: farming, oysters

Edible Jersey: Old Stock, New Generation – 2018 IACP Award for Narrative Food Writing

July 20, 2017 by jennhallwrites

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. This is good, old-fashioned work. Read between the lines of his wry, salty demeanor—one honed over years on the water, and delivered via a constant […]

Categories: food & drink, on the water • Tags: farming, oysters

Edible Jersey: How Rutgers Revitalized an Industry – 2018 IACP Award for Narrative Food Writing

July 20, 2017 by jennhallwrites

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. Roll back the clock, and the turn-of-the-19th-century docks […]

Categories: food & drink, on the water, sustainable & just • Tags: farming, oysters

Edible Jersey: The Overlooked History of the Bayshore – 2018 IACP Award for Narrative Food Writing

July 20, 2017 by jennhallwrites

“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. The word “rich” is key: Though it may surprise a bayside road-tripper today, many millionaires were christened along these waters a […]

Categories: food & drink, on the water • Tags: farming, oysters

Edible Jersey: Oyster Innovation – Building Reefs, Business, and Community – 2018 IACP Award for Narrative Food Writing

July 20, 2017 by jennhallwrites

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. “All of Barnegat Bay was productive at one time,” Parsons says. “You could take a shell and put […]

Categories: food & drink, on the water, sustainable & just • Tags: farming, oysters

Jenn Hall

Writer. Wanderer. Always hungry. IACP / AFJ / Eddy winner. 2019 Best American Food Writing Notable.

Category Archives: on the water

Edible Jersey: New Jersey Clams – Boom and Bust . . . and Boom?

Edible Jersey: Hard Clam Aquaculture 101

NPR’s The Salt: On East Coast Oyster Farms, ‘Women are Rising up from the Bay in a Big Way’

Edible Jersey: Special Report – Oysters – 2018 IACP Award for Narrative Food Writing

Edible Jersey: The Oyster Farmers – 2018 IACP Award for Narrative Food Writing

Edible Jersey: The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Delaware Bay Oyster – 2018 IACP Award for Narrative Food Writing

Edible Jersey: Old Stock, New Generation – 2018 IACP Award for Narrative Food Writing

Edible Jersey: How Rutgers Revitalized an Industry – 2018 IACP Award for Narrative Food Writing

Edible Jersey: The Overlooked History of the Bayshore – 2018 IACP Award for Narrative Food Writing

Edible Jersey: Oyster Innovation – Building Reefs, Business, and Community – 2018 IACP Award for Narrative Food Writing