Health officials are closing a growing number of oyster beds in the northeastern United States out of fear of vibrio, but despite the cutting off of product, dealers in the region are not worried about a shortage.
“The good thing about the market is there are a lot of oysters coming from a lot of different regions,” Tom Ahern, who heads up the Rhode Island sales office for Eliot, Maine-based J.P.’s Shellfish, and sits on the board of directors for the East Coast Shellfish Growers Association, told SeafoodSource. “You’re not pigeonholed into having just one source.”
A number of high-profile oyster bed closures in New England over the summer have cut off a normally robust supply of raw oysters. It started on 5 Aug., when the Connecticut Department of Agriculture issued a recall of Cape Neddick and Blue Point oysters harvested off Norwalk and Westport. The recall hit retailers on the U.S. East coast as far south as Virginia, and as far north as Ontario, Canada.
By the end of the month, on 30 August, Massachusetts followed suit, issuing a similar closure of oyster beds in Plymouth, Kingston, Duxbury and Marshfield. The state followed that with another closure in Edgartown on 9 Sept. The closures came after a larger than usual number of people in Maine, Massachusetts and Washington state (figures from Maine were unavailable) reported coming down with vibriosis, a gastrointestinal disease linked to eating oysters contaminated with the vibrio parahaemolyticus bacteria.
In the past, closures like these were enough to worry dealers, but the surge in interest in the tasty bivalves has produced an abundance of product of late that makes compensating for the closures easier. Ahern said he hasn’t noticed a dramatic shift in supply or prices, despite the closures. That, he said, is due to what he calls the “renaissance” the industry has gone through over the past 10-15 years.
Ben Lloyd, owner of Pangea shellfish company, based in Boston, told SeafoodSource he is still moving product — it’s just coming from other sources now, and his customers remain happy.
“People are just picking other oysters, because they understand,” he said.
Ahern said his customers aren’t as picky either. They may not be able to get Blue Point oysters for a while, but as long as there’s something to find at the local oyster bar, they’re happy.
“You have some attrition, but not much,” he said. “(Closures are) a reality of the business. Everybody understands that.”
Lloyd said he’ll be more worried about the reopening of those beds. Closures don’t last forever, and when the beds off Massachusetts and Connecticut open up again, there will be a bumper-crop of oysters coming in. If anything will have an affect on prices, he said, it will be the inevitable “glut,” but even that will be temporary.
“I think there’s enough of a demand that we’ll catch up to it,” he said.
