Despite the desire for local and sustainable seafood, oyster farmers and communities from New York to Rhode Island clash. (via hakaimagazine)
From the shore, you have to squint to see them—the 50 or so objects that look like large black duffel bags floating in several rows near the surface of Napeague Bay in East Hampton, New York. And if it’s dark, or the wind churns up waves, you might not spot them at all. To get a better look from the beach, you really need binoculars, which is what Adam Younes uses when he wants to do a visual check of these bobbling floats marking his oyster farm.
Younes never imagined that his farm, his promised land, would unleash so much disapproval. More than a year later, the memories of the review continue to haunt him. “Talking about this still makes me sick and angry,” he says, with a heavy sigh. “It was an emotional fight.” After struggling early in the pandemic, some farmers in the United States described the summer of 2021 as “” as they worked overtime to deliver oysters to customers who were craving the salty bivalves after a long period of COVID-19-induced restaurant closures.
Younes points out that his cages are near the surface only between June and October, which helps him get higher yields since there is more food for the oysters to feast on near the surface and he’s better able to monitor the shells and address any problems; after that, he drops the cages to the seafloor. Unfortunately, the months the cages are on the surface are also peak sailing season.
In both coastal communities, residents voice concerns that oyster farms would be privatizing and profiting from space that has always been public.