Pages tagged Eastern
ACE Basin
Single oysters from floating cages in a protected Lowcountry estuary, grown by Trey McMillan's Lowcountry Oyster Co. and tumbled for a deep cup.
Barnstable Harbor
Cape Cod sand flats opened to farming in the mid-1990s. By 2010 about 52 town grants worked 100 acres, on ten-foot tides that flush the harbor twice a day.
Beaufort
Home of Lady's Island Oyster and its Single Lady, founded in 2007 by Frank Roberts, who built a hatchery in 2014 when the state shut out northern seed.
Bedeque Bay
The south-shore PEI bay that until recently supplied over 65% of the island's oysters. MSX reached it in June 2024, and oysters died in large numbers in April 2025.
Caminada Bay
Cage-grown Louisiana oysters from Bright Side Oyster Co., begun in 2018 with seed won from Murder Point in an Instagram contest. Market size in under eight months.
Capers Blades
Wild Lowcountry oysters from the marsh behind South Carolina's barrier islands, separated from their clusters with an iron tool and sold one at a time since 2008.
Cappahosic
A York River oyster from Gloucester, Virginia. Mark Vann planted 50,000 as a hobby in 2013; his wife spent 33 years as a marine scientist at VIMS.
Charleston
Single oysters from floating cages in Green Creek, off the Stono River near Folly Beach. Thomas Bierce launched the farm in 2015 and harvested first in 2016.
Chesapeake Gold
Hoopers Island Oyster Company's caged triploid oyster, from a farm a third-generation crabber co-founded in 2010. It also runs Maryland's first commercial oyster hatchery.
Chester River
An upper-bay Maryland river farmed by Scott Budden's Orchard Point Oyster Co. since 2015. Rain cut the salinity in 2018–19, and four million oysters were moved to Eastern Bay.
Copano Bay
Site of Texas's first permitted oyster farm, Brad Lomax's Texas Oyster Ranch, after the state legalized oyster mariculture in 2019. The oysters are sold as Copano Unos.
Cypress Point
Farmed Gulf oysters from Oyster Bay at Spring Creek, Florida, sold as Little Honeys. Jody Houck, a retired engineer, and her husband Dewey started in 2019.
East Dennis
A Cape Cod Bay oyster grown since 2003 by John and Stephanie Lowell on two acres of flats off Crowe's Pasture. In winter the stock goes into an insulated trailer.
Eastham
Wellfleet's southern neighbor on the outer Cape: 26 aquaculture licenses, a first grant dating to 1928, and a harvest that tripled between 2014 and 2018.
Trésor du large
A Magdalen Islands oyster grown in the open Gulf of St. Lawrence at 21 metres, from New Brunswick seed. Meaty, crunchy and a little saltier than lagoon oysters.
Grand Isle
Louisiana's off-bottom oyster district: a 25-acre zone set up in 2014, and since April 2025 a shared brand, Grand Isle Jewels, for eight farmers' cage-grown oysters.
Great South Bay
The bay behind Fire Island that named the Blue Point. Its oysters collapsed between 1940 and 1980; Islip's hatchery and leased plots are bringing farmed ones back.
Harkers Island
Oysters from floating mesh bags in the North River, between Beaufort and Harkers Island. Roy Emerson started the farm in 2017; ready in 10 to 18 months.
Hilton Head
Shell Ring Oyster Company's hand-tumbled singles from Port Royal Sound, served at Hudson's, a restaurant built on the shells of a 1912 oyster factory.
Little Ram
A Gardiners Bay oyster from a 20-acre farm off Shelter Island, founded in 2018 by Elizabeth Peeples and Stefanie Bassett. Over two million oysters a year.
Little Wicomico
The Cockrell family's oyster from a small Northern Neck river, sold as Blackberry. The business dates to 1930 and is in its fourth generation.
Masonboro Pearls
A Wilmington-area oyster grown next to the Masonboro estuarine reserve. In late winter a blue-green alga can stain the gills jade, and they are sold as Carolina Jades.
Matagorda Pearls
Texas farmed oysters from DJ's Oyster Company at Palacios, permitted in August 2022. Hurricane Beryl destroyed 100 cages in July 2024; the farm carried on.
Megansett Harbor
The Buzzards Bay harbor where Dan Ward, an aquaculture PhD, has grown Fiddler's Cove oysters since 2012 on ten acres of exposed sandy bottom.
Montauk Pearls
Montauk's first oyster farm, begun in 2009 by fisherman Mike Martinsen and biologist Mike Doall. A surface-grown oyster: salty, crisp, with a finish like watermelon rind.
Olde Salt
Travis and Ryan Croxton's Chincoteague oyster, from bays fed almost only by the Atlantic. About twice as salty as a Chesapeake oyster, and market size in six months.
Patuxent River
The Maryland river farmed by Tal Petty's Hollywood Oyster Company since 2010. Its Sweet Jesus oyster is sold as "a truffle in a shell".
Peconic Gold
The Ketcham family's North Fork oyster from a ten-acre shallow bank in Great Peconic Bay. Iron from the Peconic River and algae blooms give the shell its color.
Peconic Pearls
A North Fork cooperative oyster, seeded from a Southold hatchery run since 2000. Five cents from each one sold goes to work on the Peconic Estuary.
Puffer's Petites
A small Wellfleet oyster from the Puffer family's Mayo Beach grant. Very salty first, then a savory depth that one writer compared to cured Italian meat.
Robins Island
Peconic Bay oysters from an underwater grant worked since the late 1800s, beside a privately owned island. Medium brine and an iron richness, in Rowan Jacobsen's words.
Salt Pond
Dave Roebuck's Point Judith Pond oyster, planted loose on the bottom and taken up by bull rake or diver. His floating upweller also supplies seed to farms from New Jersey to New Hampshire.
Shooting Point
An Eastern Shore of Virginia farm run by two former Rutgers shellfish geneticists, with oysters from Nassawadox Creek on the bay side and Hog Island Bay on the sea side.
Standish Shore
Ben Lloyd's Duxbury Bay oyster: nursed in bags, tumbled three or four times, then spread loose on the bottom. Ready in 18 to 24 months.
Sweet Neck
One of Katama Bay's oldest farms, founded by Jack and Sue Blake in 1996. Oysters grow under a raft with a wind turbine and reach market in about 15 months.
Tangier Island
Farmed in floating cages off an eroding Chesapeake island of 450 people. Investors and local watermen started it; ice destroyed 600,000 oysters before the first harvest.
Tatamagouche
A big, sandy-colored, often long and narrow oyster from Nova Scotia's Northumberland shore. Sold May to early winter; uneven, and very good when it is good.
Tybee Island
One of Georgia's two surface oyster farms: Perry and Laura Solomon's FlipFarm baskets at the mouth of the Bull River, selling single oysters called Salt Bombs to 14 local restaurants.
Barataria Bay
A Louisiana bay between the Mississippi and the Gulf, at the center of a fight between rebuilding a sinking coast and keeping oyster water salty.
Bras d'Or
An inland sea in the middle of Cape Breton Island, where a parasite wiped out the oyster industry in 2002. Suspended cages and First Nations farms are bringing it back.
Galveston Bay
The Texas bay whose reefs were smothered by Hurricane Ike's surge. Wild harvest now depends on which areas pass state sampling each season.
Mississippi Sound
Once a major wild oyster ground on the Gulf. River water diverted to protect New Orleans in 2019 killed almost all of it, and the reefs have not recovered.
Sapelo Island
Once part of one of the world's great oyster coasts, then almost empty of oysters. Georgia's marsh country around Sapelo is growing them again.
Stump Sound
A sound behind Topsail Island whose oysters locals will put 'up against any oysters growing in the United States'. Wild in season, farmed year-round.
Cape May
Delaware Bay's modern farmed oyster, grown on intertidal racks from disease-resistant Rutgers seed, with farm rules shaped around a threatened shorebird.
Choptank Sweet
A surface-float Chesapeake oyster from Cambridge, Maryland. The river's mid-range salt keeps the brine gentle, and the grower calls the flavor sweet and buttery.
James River
The low-salt river that supplied seed oysters to Virginia's growers for generations, and whose oysters, pushed upriver by drought, helped the Jamestown colonists survive.
Lynnhaven
The Virginia Beach river whose oysters once reached presidents' tables. Condemned for shellfish in 2006, it is now more than half open, and nearly all its oysters are farmed.
York River
A lower-Chesapeake oyster grown in off-bottom cages near Yorktown, moderately salty with a sweet finish, in the river that is also home to the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.
Bagaduce River
A tidal river at the head of Penobscot Bay where several small farms grow Eastern oysters, and where the boom in leases has become a local argument.
Aunt Dotty
A petite, dense Massachusetts oyster from trays on the Saquish flats, named for the great-aunt who kept the family business going off-grid in the 1940s.
Cotuit
One of America's oldest oyster brands, from a Cape Cod bay where oysters once went by wagon and rail to Boston and New York.
Damariscotta River
A cold tidal river in midcoast Maine where eight farms, from a 1985 hatchery to diver-harvested bottom oysters, share the water with 2,000-year-old shell heaps.
Dodge Cove
Hatchery-born oysters finished on the bottom of the Damariscotta River by the operators of Maine's oldest oyster farm. Light, citrus and restrained brine, says the grower.
Duxbury
A small bay inside Cape Cod Bay where about twenty licensed growers farm oysters in water that never held wild oysters.
Flying Point
A Casco Bay oyster planted on hard bottom and exposed only at the lowest tides, grown by a Freeport couple since 2000. Brothy, briny and buttery, they say.
Fox Point
A small Little Bay farm in New Hampshire's Great Bay estuary, where most of the state's oysters are grown. Tumbled and sorted through two or three seasons.
Hampton-Seabrook
New Hampshire's small second oyster estuary, where one farm, Swell Oyster Co., pioneered suspended culture and opened the state's first farm oyster shack.
Johns River
Nursery-raised in the Damariscotta, then moved 22 miles to Johns River to finish on bottom leases and rafts. Harvested year-round.
Katama Bay
A Martha's Vineyard bay behind a barrier beach that storms break open every decade or two, home to about a dozen independent oyster farms.
Mere Point
A tumbled, off-bottom Casco Bay oyster from two Brunswick families, grown in two years from 2 mm seed. Crisp, firm and salty, says the farm.
Mookie Blues
A surface-grown Damariscotta oyster from a farm whose hatchery seeds much of the East Coast. The grower promises a big briny kiss and a sweet finish.
Moon Shoal
A boat-access-only farm in Barnstable Harbor's Great Marsh, grown at low density and hand-harvested. Sweeter than most Cape oysters, say the growers.
Nonesuch
A Scarborough, Maine farm whose oysters spend their final year loose on the river bottom, with 9 to 12 foot tides mixing fresh and salt water.
Norumbega
A family-run Damariscotta River oyster, hand-harvested off the bottom or grown at the surface for small, deep-cupped petites.
Pemaquid
One of the first Maine oysters on the market, grown since 1986 on hard, high-current bottom in the Damariscotta River.
Spinney Creek
A tidal creek off the Piscataqua whose flow is controlled by a floodgate. The Howell family's firm grows oysters in suspended cages and depurates every one.
Wellfleet
Cape Cod's oyster town since Champlain named its harbor after oysters in 1606. Farmed grants, a wild fishery, and a festival every October.
Weskeag
A salt-marsh estuary farm near Rockland selling bottom-grown 'Submarines' and floating-bag 'Snow Points'. Buttery, with a briny yet sweet finish, says the farm.
Barnegat Bay
A dozen small farms behind Long Beach Island, selling under names like Sugar Shack and Salty Rose, and reviving a bay whose oyster trade died in the 1950s.
Copps Island
Long Island Sound oysters from beds sheltered by the Norwalk Islands, farmed by a family whose predecessors once controlled 22,000 acres of Connecticut shellfish ground.
Fishers Island
A New York island oyster grown in suspension and tumbled in West Harbor by the same family for more than 40 years.
Ninigret Pond
A Charlestown salt pond farmed by several growers, among them Behan Family Farms, whose rack-and-bag oysters never touch the bottom.
Wianno
A Barnstable oyster grown two ways: bottom-planted in West Bay near Osterville for shell strength, and caged off the bottom in Barnstable Harbor.
Glidden Point
A four-year, bottom-grown Damariscotta River oyster, hand-harvested partly by divers. The farm describes it as clean, crisp and big on brine.
Moonstone
A bottom-finished Point Judith Pond oyster with striped shells and a full, mineral body that Rowan Jacobsen calls fine and flinty.
Thimble Island
Oysters from the Thimble Islands in Long Island Sound, where Bren Smith pioneered 'regenerative ocean farming' with kelp above and shellfish below.
Widow's Hole
A North Fork oyster grown in suspended purses off a Greenport house, in a village where 1,500 people once worked in oysters.
Beausoleil
A small New Brunswick oyster raised in floating trays that never touch the seabed, with a white shell, a black crescent and a hint of warm bread.
Blue Point
The Great South Bay name that became shorthand for any Eastern oyster. What a 1908 law said, and where most 'Blue Points' come from now.
Chincoteague
The Virginia island that shipped 175,000 gallons of oysters a season in the 1930s, and still sells a salt oyster summed up as "salt, salt, and more salt".
Island Creek
A Duxbury Bay oyster from a farm started after a parasite wiped out one man's clams. Cold, full-salinity water in a bay that never had wild oysters.
Lucky Lime
A New London Bay oyster named for the green algae that colors its shell, sold by the Raspberry Point team on PEI's north shore.
Malpeque
The Prince Edward Island oyster judged the world's tastiest in Paris in 1900, and the bay that gave its name to an oyster disease.
Matunuck
A Rhode Island salt-pond oyster served at the raw bar that overlooks the farm, where it is harvested off the patio.
Mystic
A round, deep-cupped Connecticut oyster finished on hard, managed beds by Steve Plant of the Noank Aquaculture Cooperative.
Naked Cowboy
A wild Long Island Sound oyster gathered by divers, sold under a name borrowed from the Times Square street performer.
Watch Hill
A Winnapaug Pond oyster grown in off-bottom trays behind a barrier beach, filled and drained by the ocean twice a day.
Murder Point
A shrimping family's off-bottom Gulf oyster, grown in floating baskets and named after a deadly fight over an oyster lease.
Caraquet
A small, slow-grown oyster from the cold bay of an Acadian fishing town, long a staple of Maritime fishermen and pubs.
Raspberry Point
A north-shore PEI oyster grown in off-bottom cages, from a business with more than 30 years in oysters. More crunch and salt than a first-timer's oyster.
Colville Bay
A bottom-farmed oyster from eastern PEI, tonged from soft sand at the mouth of the Souris River, with an aqua-green shell and a salty-sweet taste.
Rappahannock
A Chesapeake oyster from a family lease filed in 1899, revived by two cousins in 2001 when the bay's native oysters were down to about 1% of their historic numbers.
Apalachicola
Florida's great tonged oyster, lost in the 2012 collapse after years of low river flow. A two-month season returned in 2026 on about 500 acres.
Totten Inlet
An algae-rich south Puget Sound inlet that grows Pacifics fast, and one of the few West Coast places where Eastern oysters are farmed.