Louisiana Foods Fish Fact for:
OYSTERS

More oysters than we've had in 20 years, that's the word from Chesapeake Bay. Plenty of rain this year lowered salinity levels to produce excellent (i.e. disease resistant) growout conditions in the Bay. And so it goes around the country: Long Island Sound once again has proven itself the nation's most consistent producer, and Gulf oysters, led by Louisiana, are more abundant than ever. In short, it's the year of the American oyster. But not the Pacific oyster. With unprecedented buying from Asia, expect shortages and higher prices over the next two years for Pacifics. The export market in Asia for live, in-shell oysters is so strong that farmers are even selling their Extra Smalls, i.e., next year's crop. The best news is demand is the strongest it's been in years, and that includes the summer months, when IQF raw oysters, plus coldwater oysters from New England and Canada, combine to satisfy America's rekindled appetite for the world's sexiest food.

Species Specifics
  • A productive female oyster can discharge up to 115 million eggs at one time. The larvae swim and float for several weeks before settling on a hard surface such as oyster shells, rocks or pilings, a process called spatfall.
  • The Pacific or Japanese oyster, Crassostrea gigas, makes up 70% of the annual world oyster harvest of roughly 1 million metric tons.
  • While Pacific oysters are dominant worldwide, American oysters, Crassostrea virginica, are the main oyster of the United States, comprising about two thirds of the national production.
  • Oysters are filter feeders, siphoning 20 to 40 gallons of water a day, a fact that makes them very vulnerable to pollution.
  • Washington state leads in the production of Pacific oysters in the U.S., and Louisiana is the top producer of American oysters.

Have Freckels? Eat an Oyster
According to Welsh folklore, a pale young woman can improve her complexion if she eats oysters. In China, it is believed that oysters remove freckles.

Born to Have Sex
Marine scientists at the Virginia Institute at Gloucester Point are baffled over the spawning of 40 "sterilized" Pacific oysters. The event is regarded as a major setback by scientists who wanted to place the sterile oysters in Chesapeake Bay to study their reactions to local parasites that have decimated the native population. The idea was to see if the oysters could resist the parasites and then apply the information toward helping native oysters do the same. The Pacific oysters resisted dermo and MSX, the deadly killers of Chesapeake oysters, but they also reversed their sterilization. The experiment was discontinued because of the fear that the Pacific oysters might take over, not an ungrounded concern, we assume.

The above information is from the Seafood Leader, Vol. 15, No. 5.
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