It’s been a while since I posted last. We moved to Bainbridge Island last December to a house on the water. I thought it would be fun to take advantage of this location by trying to grow oysters and mussels on our beach. (We have some piddock clams on the beach, but they’re hard to dig out of the rock and apparently not super tasty.) The Puget Sound Restoration Fund on Bainbridge sells oyster, clam, and mussel seed plus the gear you need to grow them each year in their annual seed sale. (Taylor Shellfish Farms does this as well, and they have more instructions on their site how to get started.)

To do this, you stake out a length of line between rebar stakes. You put the shellfish seed in plastic mesh bags and ziptie the bags to the line. Then, you let nature do it’s thing, with just some periodic cleaning and inspection of the bags. Theoretically, in 12-18 months, I’ll have eating-siize shellfish ready to go. I’m set out Kumamoto oysters, Pacific oysters, and mussels. We’ll see how it goes, but I’m kind of excited (since I love shellfish, as I’ve mentioned in posts for a while, like this.)

The oyster spat come in a gallon Ziplock. There are 300-400 oysters per bag. Here is a shot of the Pacifics in the bag.

The mussels are attached to a length of rope:

Here are the bags staked out on the beach, ready for the tide to come up.