Pages tagged Virginia
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Chesapeake Oyster Wars
Police gunboats, oyster pirates and a law that kept sail alive: the century-long fight over Chesapeake oysters, and the harvest data that shows what it cost.
Virginia's Oyster Trail
Virginia maps its oysters into eight regions, from Atlantic-salty to river-sweet. A route for tasting the difference salinity makes in a single state.
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".
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.