For most of the twentieth century, this bay produced a remarkable share of the oysters eaten in the United States, and it did so using methods that had barely changed in generations. Understanding that history explains a great deal about the town, the shape of the working waterfront, and why the condition of the estuary is a subject people here discuss with more feeling than outsiders expect.
Why this bay
Oysters need brackish water: salty enough to sustain them, fresh enough to hold off the predators and diseases that thrive in full seawater. An estuary fed by a large river and sheltered by barrier islands produces exactly that, and this one did it across a wide area of shallow, firm bottom. The result was natural reefs extensive enough to support a commercial fishery for well over a century.
How it was worked
The distinctive feature of the fishery here was that it was done by hand from small boats, using long-handled tongs to gather oysters from the bars, rather than by dredging. It was slow, physically demanding work, and it was also relatively gentle on the reefs compared with mechanised alternatives. It supported a large number of small independent operators rather than a few large ones, which is why the town developed the way it did.
- Tonging. Hand-operated scissor tongs worked from an open boat, the defining method here for generations.
- Shucking houses. Shore-side processing that employed much of the town and shaped the waterfront.
- Shell return. Returning cleaned shell to the bars to give new oysters something to settle on.
- Seasonal closures. Long-standing rules aimed at letting the bars recover between harvests.
The decline
The fishery collapsed in the early 2010s, and the causes were multiple and contested: sustained reduction of freshwater flow from upstream, drought, the after-effects of a major regional environmental event, and the harvesting pressure that followed it. The consequence was that the state eventually closed wild harvesting in the bay to allow restoration efforts to proceed, a decision that reshaped the economy of the town.
What is happening now
Restoration work has focused on rebuilding the reef substrate by returning shell and other cultch material to the bars, alongside monitoring of water quality and freshwater inflow. Aquaculture has grown as a parallel activity. Whether the wild fishery returns to anything like its former scale is an open question that depends heavily on water management decisions made far upstream and outside this county entirely.
Anyone spending a day on this water is, whether they think about it or not, boating over the remains and the rebuilding of one of the more significant fisheries in the country. The oyster bars you steer around are the reason the town is here.