Bodega Bay Oyster Co. grows tide-to-table shellfish

The oyster - sublime and luscious to some, slimy and repulsive to others - is once again on the rise in the U.S.

After pollution and over-harvesting took its toll in the early 20th century, the briny bivalves became scarce and pricey. But thanks to an explosion of new oyster farms in recent years, as well as the expansion of historic farms like Taylor Shellfish in Washington state, oyster bars are shucking up a storm.

“North America is in the midst of an oyster renaissance the likes of which has not been seen since the Gilded Age,” the Wall Street Journal proclaimed in 2012. Those of us lucky enough to live on the North Coast know there’s no better place to find fat, meaty oysters for grilling and creamy, raw oysters for slurping than in our own watery back yard - the 15-mile long Tomales Bay, home to a handful of beloved oyster farms.

Martin Strain, founder and owner of Bodega Bay Oyster Co. near Valley Ford, has been farming shellfish in Tomales Bay since 1985. The UC Berkeley graduate and descendant of an historic Olema ranching family left his desk job 31 years ago for the windy but invigorating environment of the bay in West Marin, where temperate conditions and a tidal influx of fresh seawater create an ideal setting for growing oysters.

Arriving from a hatchery as tiny seeds the size of quinoa, the baby bivalves are able grow plump bodies and hard shells all year in the temperate waters of the bay. By comparison, water in Washington’s Puget Sound warms up to 80 degrees in the summer, causing the oysters to spawn and turn mushy. Then it freezes in the winter, stunting their growth.

“Because we have coastal upwelling, (the water) stays between 50 and 60 degrees year round,” Martin said. “You could not ask for anything better in terms of growth rate - it’s twice as fast as other areas - and the condition of the product is much better.”

Five years ago, the Strain family purchased the former New Amsterdam on Valley Ford Road, a funky, roadside restaurant and watering hole renowned for its barbecued oysters. After renovations, they reopened the property two years ago as a retail outlet and production facility for their farmed shellfish, including Manila clams, Gallo mussels and Kumamoto, Atlantic and Miyagi (Pacific) oysters.

This summer, the store started serving barbecued and shucked oysters on the weekends for guests seated outside at picnic tables. They don’t require a reservation, which is good to know if you’ve ever tried to get a weekend seat at one the wildly popular oyster retailers on Tomales Bay, where reservations are now de rigueur.

“We’re more family-style and laid back ... most of our customers are tourists from the Central Valley or from the city,” said Lindsey Strain, Martin’s 23-year-old daughter, who manages the store. “We also get a lot of locals, because it’s 20 to 30 minutes closer to Santa Rosa than Hog Island.”

Lindsey, who studied agriculture at Cal Poly, works closely with her 25-year-old brother, Whitt Strain, who manages operations at the oyster farm. She does everything from directing harvest crews to filling orders from wholesale companies like Osprey in Napa and Royal Hawaiian in San Francisco. (The wholesale business is operated under the company’s original name, Point Reyes Oyster Co.)

The farm’s extra small Miyagis - favored by oyster bars all over San Francisco - can also be found at dozens of Whole Foods stores across the North Bay. Like kombucha, pickles and other locally produced products, farmed oysters have become part of the Bay Area’s “eat local” crusade.

“People really connect to the oysters,” Whitt said. “I call it tide to table ... it’s such an interesting product, and it connects you to a place.”

The Bodega Bay Oyster Co. has grown over the years, starting with a 5-acre lease in Tomales Bay and now leasing a total of 92 acres at the north, middle and south ends of the bay. Martin recently renewed his leases with the Department of Fish & Game, but those fees pale in comparison to other costs.

“Most of the risk in shellfish growing comes from doing the work,” he said. “That means the labor, just getting everything out there and complying with the rules and regulations.”

Sustainable farm

Martin is careful to run the shellfish farm in the most sustainable way possible, doing his best not to waste anything.

“Most of our gear is recyclable, and we reuse it for many, many years,” he said. “I’ve had some bags for 20 years. They’re pretty sturdy.”

Oyster farming has been going on for a long time in the Bay Area. In the mid-1850s, the European-American settlers started harvesting the native Olympia oysters from San Francisco Bay, then imported Atlantic oysters and cultured them near Oyster Point in San Francisco. When the San Francisco Bay became too populated and polluted in the 1870s, the oyster farms moved to the cleaner waters of Tomales Bay.

“That makes it the longest cultured oyster area in the U.S.,” Martin said. “It started off with the Eastern (Atlantic) oyster, but once people went to Japan, they brought back the Pacific oyster (from the prefecture of Miyagi), and that’s what the industry has switched to.” (Pacific oysters are also known by hundreds of other trade names, depending on where they are grown.)

To launch his aquaculture career, Martin interned at what is now Penn Cove Mussels on Whidbey Island, Washington, then tried his hand at growing mussels in Tomales Bay. The experiment did not take off the way he hoped.

“We weren’t very successful until we were able to buy seed seven years later,” he said. “But oyster seed was available, and through hard work and trial and error, we developed different techniques for growing them.”

Unless you’re big enough to own your own hatchery, the first step in oyster culture is purchasing the seed. At Bodega Bay Oyster Co., they put the seeds into small, mesh bags attached to long lines so that the bags rise and fall with the tides. The bags are placed at the farm’s Northern lease, where the bivalves filter out their food - phytoplankton and algae - from the nutrient dense water.

“In the outer bay, the tide turns over twice a day,” Martin said. “Our 60-acre lease on the Walker Creek delta gets bathed in algae-rich seawater, coming right off the Pacific Ocean.”

The farm pays about a penny for each seed, but an estimated 40 to 50 percent of the oysters die off before maturity, boosting the cost to about 2 cents a seed. That adds up when you grow 2 million oysters a year, the company’s estimated production.

“Tomales Bay has a fairly low survival rate to maturity,” Martin said. “Because the bay has been used to culture for so long ... we have a high background load of pathogenic organisms for oysters. Between the resident diseases and the fast growth, those two things lead to higher mortality.”

The small seeds of the Miyagi oysters stay in floating bags in the nursery area for about six months to a year, where they can access the most nutrients in the water.

“We work them in the nursery, taking them back to shore and running them through a rotating chute cylinder, called a tumble sorter,” Whitt said. “That strengthens them and sorts them by size.”

The fast growing oysters are separated from the slow growing oysters so they don’t compete with each other. When the Miyagi seeds grow to be about a half-inch wide, they are planted into ground bags (without floats) back at the North acreage until they grow out to maturity. For extra small Miyagis, that may take 18 months to two years. (The Miyagi oyster, unlike the Kumamoto, will keep growing indefinitely.)

“Our most popular here at the store is the medium Miyagi in the summer, when people want to barbecue them,” Lindsey said. “During the holidays, the extra small Miyagis and the medium Kumamotos are more popular.”

The farm’s Kumamotos and Atlantic oysters take longer to reach maturity, so they grow out on racks, where they are protected from bottom predators such as oyster drills and juvenile crabs.

After each species of oyster reaches market size, they are taken to the company’s mid-bay lease, just south of the Straus Family Ranch in Marshall, where they are held in the deeper water until harvest.

During harvest, the crew brings long-handled hooks aboard the boats to grab the mesh bags, which weigh about 40 pounds each. Then the bags are trucked to the production facility at the store, where they are sorted and bagged up by hand, according to whether they are destined for the retail shop (in totes with ice), the wholesale market (in mesh bags) or the farmers markets in Alemany and Vallejo (coolers).

Retail only

The farm’s clams also are grown from seed, but they mature in bags full of gravel that are placed into the soft mud, where they like to live. They glean mussels from oyster bags and other structures in Tomales Bay, then grow them out in mesh bags. Both clams and mussels are raised for retail only, along with the Kumamotos.

One of the difficulties faced by the Bodega Bay Oyster Co., Martin said, is being able to source a steady supply of seed, which is now in high demand.

“Unless you have continual planting behind you, you are going to have gaps in your production,” Martin said. “Most of the farms up in Washington have their own hatcheries, but most of us in California are all medium to small farms. You just have to work around your constraints.”

Bodega Bay Oyster Co. - like most of the other medium-sized farms on Tomales Bay - supplements its oyster supply by buying from other producers. But Martin has plans to triple his production in the future by expanding his nursery operation into Humboldt Bay, where he’s scheduled to get a “flupsy” (floating upweller system), which protects the tiny seeds as they grow.

Meanwhile, the retail store is still serving barbecued oysters on Saturdays and will be open every day until winter, when it will be closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The family is considering opening a restaurant in the space adjacent to the store.

“We’re thinking about moving in that direction,” Martin said, “but there’s a lot of seasonality out here.”

As most locals know, fall and winter are the best time of year, weather-wise, to take a drive to?the coast in search of some tasty?oysters for tailgate parties, harvest celebrations and holiday feasts.

“The water is glassy, and there’s almost no wind,” Whitt said. “And the oysters are really good.”

Staff writer Diane Peterson can be reached at 521-5287 or diane.peterson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @dianepete56.

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