Maine’s Ideal Oyster Growing Environment Winterpoint Oyster Farm Oysters being Cleaned Today, Maine oyster farmers harvest well over an estimated 3 million oysters a year – a number that doesn’t even keep up with the growing demand. It wasn’t until the 1990’s when a few daring aquaculturists introduced “seed” (cultivated juvenile oysters – or “spats”) back into sheltered river inlets that the Maine oyster population was rejuvenated. Even the few surviving pockets were likely destroyed by manmade river pollution that started with the European settlement and eventual shipbuilding along the coast of Maine. About 1,000 years ago, scientists speculate that a combination of rising water levels, predation from marine snails known as oyster drills, and dramatically colder water temperatures all combined to decimate the native oyster population.
These middens, some the size of small hills, date back over 2,500 years ago, when the indigenous Native People feasted on them in great numbers. The prehistoric middens (piles of ancient shucked oyster shells) that still dot some Maine riverbanks are a testimony to the abundance of wild oysters that once thrived in our waterways.
Oyster bay over pink tones full#
We contend that the cold-water Maine Oyster’s, robust, deep cupped, textured and full of briny “liquor” are the best oysters you can find. This Eastern Oyster has many different market names (think “Wellfleets” “Blue Points” “Dodge Coves” etc.) so named after where they come from, and while they are all the same species, each oyster differs from state to state, and from cove to cove. It might surprise some that there are only five unique species of oysters in the United States – and from Maine to the Gulf of Mexico, the champion is the common Eastern Oyster, or Crassostrea virginica.
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