Few foods are as polarizing as the oyster. This little bivalve provokes strong feelings on both sides, from those who love it fiercely and defend it as a tasty eco-friendly delicacy, to those who liken it to eating snot. I must confess that I was part of the latter group as a kid, but in the past few years have changed my opinion. Once I got over the strange texture and gray meat, I realized that like all of my favorite foods (pickles, olives, sharp cheese …), oysters were just another delicious vehicle for salt.
From an ecological perspective, oysters are about as close to a free lunch as one can get. This study published in Nature evaluated the greenhouse gas emissions, land and water use, and nutrient pollution associated with different species groups in global fisheries and aquaculture. They found that farmed bivalves had the lowest overall footprint, tied only with farmed seaweed. Oysters are also filter feeders, cleaning the waters around them by removing suspended plankton and algae. A single adult oyster can filter over 50 gallons of water in a day!
Japanese people have been eating oysters since prehistoric times. Shell middens dating back to the Jomon period (14,000-3,000 BCE) are sprinkled across the archipelago, and provide modern archaeologists with a rich record of these ancient societies. Today in Japan, people eat sashimi and raw eggs on rice without batting an eye, but oysters are almost always cooked. Raw oysters have been responsible for several highly-publicized food poisoning cases here, which has clearly been enough to put people off them. In fact, many people I met in Kumihama were slightly horrified to hear that I only eat raw oysters at home. Perhaps this would be a bit like telling an American that I enjoy knocking back a half dozen raw eggs with a glass of white wine every once in a while.
Life and work in Kumihama Bay
For the past few weeks, I have been volunteering at a small family oyster farm in Kumihama Bay in Kyoto Prefecture, just a few hours train ride north of Kyoto City. Kumihama Bay is a large marine lagoon right on the coast, surrounded by small pointed mountains and separated from the Sea of Japan by a small strip of land called the Shotenkyo. There are a couple of fishing villages along the edge of the bay, all with small temples, traditional fishermen’s houses, and wooden wharfs that extend out onto the water. The houses here have dark tiled roofs decorated with whorls and god’s faces at the edges, tan walls, and sliding doors paneled with wood and papered windows. The streets are quiet. On my afternoon bike rides I pass elderly women tending to their tulip beds, men sitting by fishing lines, and the occasional tractor.
My host, a third-generation oyster farmer named Atsushi, lives and works in a large house in Shotenkyo looking out over the bay to the mountains beyond. Each morning I don my rubber boots and bright blue fishing bib before meeting him on the pier for the day’s oystering tasks, which might include power washing barnacle-encrusted gear, harvesting oysters and sorting them by size, or laying out ropes for the next season’s oyster seedlings. He farms primarily native Pacific Oysters, which he shucks to order and delivers to restaurants and local customers.
Atsushi never intended to become an oyster farmer like his father and grandfather. In fact, as a young man growing up in the very house I am now staying at in Kumihama he had dreamed of living abroad, or moving to a big city to pursue some other career path. After finishing school he flew to Australia where he lived for a year, backpacking around and working at a horse ranch for a while. But when his parents' health failed, he packed his bags and headed back home to take care of them. Reluctantly, he got his boating license and took over the family business.
Despite his initial resistance, Atsushi is now an expert farmer with a wealth of knowledge and drive to reshape the future of oyster farming in Kumihama. His goal is to introduce new methods of cultivation from abroad to the industry in Kumihama, which is dominated by labor intensive, traditional farming methods.
Tradition and change in Japanese oyster farming
The journey of a Kumihama Bay oyster starts in the northern Japanese prefectures of Iwate and Miyagi. There, oyster farmers drill holes in empty scallop shells and thread them onto ropes like large flat beads. They then lower these shells into the ocean and leave them for a few weeks for wild larval oysters floating in the water column to latch onto and begin to grow. Once the shells are sufficiently studded with baby oysters, Kumihama Bay farmers buy them and tie them to hanging ropes beneath their own floating bamboo platforms out in the bay. The oysters grow this way for up to two years before being hauled up, cracked off their scallop shell homes, cleaned, and delivered to customers.
Though perfectly functional, these hanging oyster lines are often overwhelmed with barnacles, algae, and all kinds of unwanted marine weeds that impede the growth and survival of the oysters. This is called biofouling. One of the best ways to combat biofouling is to grow your oysters in floating bags or cages that you can periodically lift out of the water and let dry. The oysters will survive thanks to their thick shells, but all those baby barnacles and slime molds are desiccated and destroyed before they can start to take over. Bag-grown oysters also have more consistently shaped shells, which makes them much more valuable.
Many oyster farms around the world use these types of systems, so why have so many fishing communities in Japan been slow to incorporate new techniques?
According to Atsushi, the reasons lie in some combination of supply chain problems and Japanese fishing culture. There aren’t many distributors for foreign-manufactured oystering equipment in Japan. Language barriers are also a problem: even if they can purchase these systems online, oyster farmers are reluctant to invest in expensive equipment if they can’t read the technical details and instructions. Furthermore, oystering is controlled by the same Fisheries Cooperative Associations (FCA) that I mentioned in my last post. These FCAs are themselves controlled by members of the older village generations, who aren’t very keen on changing the traditional ways of oyster farming that they have practiced all their lives. Atsushi has expressed personal frustration with what he sees as this resistance to innovation in the industry.
Despite all of this, Atsushi is still testing new ways of growing oysters and working to start his own equipment importing business. Yesterday I helped to haul up a few experimental bags of triploid oysters from one of his floats.* After powerwashing some of the biofouling off of their shells, we marveled at their size and heft next to the line-grown variety. A promising sign for the future of his business, and for a more diversified oyster market in Kumihama Bay.
*Triploid oysters have an extra set of chromosomes and thus are sterile, but because they don’t spend any energy on reproducing they are much larger and meatier than normal diploid oysters.
Working with Atsushi has helped me to learn more about the oyster industry, and more generally what it's like to live in a rural fishing community like Kumihama Bay. As I travel on into other prefectures, I hope to explore the that gender, income, and generational divides impact the daily reality of life on the water in these communities.
One final note:
This morning as I was making instant coffee, Atsushi’s father presented me with a hand-painted calligraphy scroll, inscribed with my name, his name, and a buddhist meditation on embracing the present that loosely translates to “one life, one meeting” (Ichi-go ichi-e). I couldn’t believe it! What a gift! But I must now figure out a way to protect this single sheet of rice paper from destruction for the next 3.5 months on the road. Any suggestions?
Until next time,
Grace
^^ a slideshow of life in Kumihama Bay!