For the love of Willapa Bay Oysters - Eco-smart Shellfish
We love, love, love fresh oysters at our house. We especially love fresh oysters from Willapa Bay. To sum it up, they taste like the sea - mildly briny and fresh, yet delicate. Therefore, whenever we find ourselves somewhat close to Willapa Bay, we make an effort to visit. And we never leave without a bag or two of fresh oysters.
Willapa Bay is located on the southwest Pacific coast of Washington, on the Long Beach Pennisula. It's the second largest estuary in the United States Pacific coast with over 26o square miles of surface. It's also the cleanest estuary in the United States, thanks to a lack of industry and a small population of year-round locals.
Shellfish have a powerful water filtering system.
The farming of oysters is benign, or can be restorative to the environment. In fact, farming populations of oysters is encouraged as shellfish clean water, remove nitrogen, enhance water clarity, and provide habitat for juvenile fish and crustaceans. There's currently an effort underway to restore native oyster populations in the Chesapeake Bay to help clean up the water.
Marine biologists say oysters literally slurp up toxins as they pump water through their systems to feed. They retain any polluted particles as the water draws over their gills, and release the rest purified. Every single adult oyster filters about 50 gallons of water a day. There's no technology available today that lives up the shellfish ability to clean our country's dirty, polluted waters.
We're pretty fussy about the oysters we eat because of their amazing filtering system. Obviously, if they are filtering the nasty toxins from highly polluted water and mud, chances are there will be concentrations of those toxins in their flesh. It's just one more reason why we love Willapa Bay Oysters from Washington.
If you have a little time, be sure to view this quick video of a camping trip we enjoyed one year at a park located in the Long Beach, Pennisula. We drove about 40 miles from our campsite to pick up fresh oysters from Willapa Bay!
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