Episode 43: The Shellfish Confessional at the 9th annual Oyster South Symposium

The Shellfish Confessional at the 9th annual Oyster South Symposium

At the 9th annual Oyster South Symposium in Houston, OYSTER-ology host Kevin Cox debuts the first “Shellfish Confessional,” through collaboration with Oyster South and The Nature Conservancy. Inviting oyster farmers, shuckers, and industry voices to admit what went wrong in their work, participants share candid stories about service shortcuts, shucking injuries, emotional strain, bad weather and the hard realities of aquaculture. Some of these Confessions included losses from bad decisions, gear and temperature mistakes and uncontrollable events like storms and ice, alongside frustrations with regulations and public misconceptions. The episode highlights these “sins” as lessons that reveal toughness, humility, and devotion to oysters, blending humor and oyster-world mythology. It then closes with playful penance rituals and the recurring aim of the business: “Kill less, sell more.”

00:00 The Shellfish Confessional

02:37 Shucker's Code

06:37 Stabbing Yourself

09:41 Emotional Shucking

15:06 Killing Oysters

18:02 Going Sideways

18:40 Nature Doesn't Care

22:56 Battling The System

25:26 The Gospel According to Oysters

29:21 Sometimes It's Personal

30:30 Annonymous Desires

32:00 In Defense of Oysters

33:41 If Oysters Could Talk

35:38 Penance & Relief

38:50 Reflections

Links:

The Nature Conservancy -  Special Sponsor of the Shellfish Confessional

Oyster South - Sponsor of the Shellfish Confessional

Credits: 

Special Thanks to The Nature Conservancy for its generous support of the Shellfish Confessional.

Special Thanks to Oyster South for hosting the Oyster South Shellfish Confessional.

Confessors: This episode features voices from Confessors across the Oyster South world and beyond, including farmers, shuckers, scientists, educators and advocates (in alphabetical order). Thanks to all of you!!

• "Anonymous "
• Autumn Pistole
• Bill Walton 
• Bob Reahult 
• Brandon Hayden
• David Aparicio 
• Dewey Houck
• Jen Sagan 
• Jodi Houck 
• John Supan 
• Julie Qiu 
• Laura Soloman 
• Leila Avery
• Leslie Sturmer 
• Libby Davis 
• Lindsey Alday 
• Rutvik Patel
• Shelby Miskal
• Thomas Derbes

Host: Kevin Cox

Digital Deckhand: Chet Jipty

Production: OYSTER-ology Podcast

SPECIAL THANKS TO: The Nature Conservancy and Oyster South for their generous support!

Please be sure to Like and Follow OYSTER-ology wherever you listen to podcasts, and tell others about it. Every positive mention of it helps more people find the podcast!

Transcript

Transcript: The Shellfish Confessional at the 10th annual Oyster South Symposium

(Anonymous Version)

Prepared by Chet Jipty

[Bubbles]

Confessor #1: Forgive me, Kevin, for I have sinned.

Confessor #2: I'm here to confess my sins today. Baby

Confessor #3: I got a bunch of don'ts and very few dos.

Confessor #16: I definitely have some sins I need to cleanse myself of. 

Confessor #4: I've been a dumb ass several times.

Confessor #2: Shucking is a lot of jiving and magic. Like, look at my hands.

Confessor #16: Man, I really hated myself after that.

Confessor #11: I'm exhausted. 

Confessor #3: We didn't know what we were doing.

Confessor #17 : Boy, that was a really a terrible choice. 

Confessor #5: I need my hands, you know, they're my money makers.

Confessor #3: Kill less, sell more.

Confessor #2: My sins were hidden.

Confessor #6: Forgive me for I have sinned and sometimes I don't care.

Confessor #3: Uh, where do I start?

Confessor #7: Uh, I feel horrible. I'm glad I got that off my chest now.

Confessor #16: Don't blame me, please. 

Confessor #8: I thought this was anonymous.

Confessor #16: Forgive me oysters for I have sinned. This is my first shellfish confessional.

Confessor #13: Good. Pray for me. 

[Bubbles]

Kevin: Welcome to OYSTER-ology, a podcast about oysters, aquaculture, and everything from spat to shuck. I'm your host and the Foodwalker, Kevin Cox. Recently in Houston, Texas was the 10th annual Oyster South Symposium, where over 300 people involved in all aspects of the oyster world converged for discussions, covering a broad range of categories, from farming to science, to business, to technology, to marketing and of course, to eating And in the midst of such a brain trust of experienced oyster experts was something new, untested and daring OYSTER-ology's first ever Oyster South Shellfish Confessional.

What is the Shellfish Confessional? Not a church exactly. More like a raw bar at the edge of a long day, or the deck of a work boat still wet from the tide, or a quiet moment somewhere between that last oyster shucked and the first beer opened, this is where the stories come out. Everyone here, no matter how experienced, carries a few they'd probably rather not lead with, but they tell them anyway. And something interesting happens when you stick a mic in the face of an oyster person and ask a very simple question: What went wrong?  What you get is blood guilt, pride, regret a little bit of mythology and a whole lot of laughter. So light a candle and dim the lights in a solemn place to experience a mosaic of woven stories which quietly merge into a colorful biography of shared oyster sin, mixed with a spirit of unrelenting toughness, resilience, commitment, and love of the oyster business.

This is the Shellfish Confessional.

[Bubbles]

Kevin: At the raw bar. Pride moves faster than the knife. Presentation matters. Reputation matters. And sometimes in the fog of service, the truth gets a little slippery. The oyster may be silent, but the shucker always knows. There's an unspoken shucker code, and sometimes the first sin isn't blood. It's judgment.

Confessor #9: Sometimes you're getting an oyster that, uh, it isn't exactly what's on the menu. Sometimes it's like a Copps Island and I have a Blue Point, I'll like pretend that they're an oyster that they're not. Yeah... I don't do it all the time, but it's just in the heat of the moment, in the trench of the raw bar

Kevin: The fog of war.

Confessor #9: Yeah, exactly. I don't like doing it, but sometimes it happens.

Confessor #7: Last year there were a couple of shuckers around us who weren't up to the mark and they were putting out oysters in our raw bar. And every now and then we'd just take their oysters and dump them in the trash. You know, we wouldn't tell them, but like, there's no way I'm serving that, that is not going out in front of my roll bar. So just throw it away.

Confessor #2: the one that I would love to confess that I have been thinking about is I worked a very high name event and I was really proud to be shucking oysters there. However, the caterer wanted us to prep shuck hours before. And that's not my jam. I believe in fresh shucked oysters. there are like 3000 guests coming at us. And this caterer is bringing us trays of pre-shucks from earlier in the day. And they were so damn ugly that I threw them in the trash, that I could not put them in front of me at this high name event at all, so.

Kevin: So those oysters all died in vain.

Confessor #2: They died in vain, but I just, I had to, I couldn't do it.

Kevin: How did you feel about that?

Confessor #2: Horrible. But I was like, what do I do? What do I do? I felt terrible throwing him away.

Kevin: Did the people who required the pres shucks ever know what you did?

Confessor #2: No, my sins were hidden.

Confessor #7: I would like to confess about a few events where I have been asked to bring a certain oyster and couldn't find it. Just couldn't find it, and uh, I brought the closer of second and just said it was what it was. That's happened

Kevin: Have you ever had what you've said in your mind like, this is not a good oyster?

Confessor #8: Certainly,

Kevin: Yeah.

Confessor #8: Yes.

Kevin: You're talking to an oyster farmer and they want to share their oysters with you, and it's like, look how good these oysters are, and you look at 'em or maybe you taste them and it's like they're not that good.

Confessor #8: Yes, I have. And things that tasted off. Absolutely. I remember one time there was a friend and I did have a slight remark on his oysters, and I think it did devastate him, but, um,

Kevin: How do you handle that situation?

Confessor #8: I sometimes will just decline trying oysters just because I don't wanna be delivering bad news. Right. Um, but that's just par for the course.

Confessor #7: As far as the buckets go, uh, this is another confession, I guess. Damnit all right. I love that I'm in the business of the bucket shucking. I think it's a great idea. I think it's really interactive and a lot of fun. I personally much rather be in a corner with a bunch of oysters facing the wall and just shucking my life away. 'cause I, yeah, I don't know. I'm at that point in life. 

Confessor #19: You just go as fast as he can, starting at two 30 and you wouldn't be done shucking until like 11 o'clock at night every single week. Hm. So cut my teeth, shucking oysters at that kind of situation. And uh, I realized I didn't really care for the oysters we were serving. Just like there has to be something better than this. There's not, this isn't the reason people really like oysters, 

Confessor #7: You know what? I don't, I don't quite enjoy shucking in restaurants. Yeah. I just don't enjoy it. I'm not a restaurant shucker catering, popups, festivals, that's my lane.

Kevin: What's the difference between shucking in a restaurant and shucking in a private event?

Confessor #7: Uh, well, one, I'm making all the money, so that's always good.

Kevin: If you shuck long enough, the blade will find you, not because you're careless necessarily, but because this work punishes confidence, the result every shucker bleeds eventually. The only real question is where and when you stab yourself and who happens to be watching when you do.

Confessor #5: Uh, it is an inherently dangerous activity. Oyster, shucking. You know, you're holding something that's kind of awkward in your hand. You're sometimes in a very limited space without a towel or a table or anything to support you. You're just kind of standing. So you do have to be careful.

Confessor #9: When you're shucking, I have a hard time of, uh, sometimes keeping my eye on the oyster. And, um, the knife just slipped and got me in the web in between my thumb.

Kevin: Ooh.

Confessor #9: It was all the way in into my hand, and I had one of my regulars watching me, and I just kind of froze. And while it was sticking outta my hand. And we just look at each other. Yeah, it was bad.

Confessor #8: It's bound to happen after so many thousands of oysters. I did puncture my palm when I was shucking oysters in my first year of shucking. It got to a point where I thought I was good and I got overly confident and therefore injured myself.

Kevin: So when you stabbed yourself did you hand an oyster to your husband and say, uh, that's just Tabasco sauce?

Confessor #8: No, it was unnoticeable at first because it was so quick that I didn't feel it until I looked at my hands. Like, huh, oh, that's a, that's a stab wound. Okay. And after that, my husband bought me my first stainless like chain mail glove. And he's like, this will never happen again. I'm gonna bring this with me everywhere. He's, he's loving like that.

Confessor #7: I was very stupid. 6:00 AM drunk. I had decided to shuck an oyster for a friend and show off of course, and I didn't wear the glove and I stabbed myself really bad in my palms, and I had to go to the ER. That was the one stab, and that's it, never again. Then I started figuring out better ways to shuck and not be stupid by shucking drunk. It was so bad. It just wouldn't stop bleeding.

Confessor #2: it was damn near career ending. between, uh, my pointer finger and my middle finger. And it was bad. I wasn't even doing anything serious. And another well-known shucker called me an idiot and told me to go sit down with my hand above my head. To stop the bleeding. It was gnarly.

Kevin: Sometimes the real wound isn't in your hand. Sometimes it's in your pride at the raw bar, passion hides behind constant motion. You keep your hands moving, you keep service going, but every now and then emotion pushes its way through.

Confessor #18: Something that's been burning since I, I heard about the confessional is this very one bad day working on the oyster bar, just having a bad time. And I had started shucking, gorgeous oysters, But, um, I stabbed the oyster in the heart and I was like, wow. And I was like, what is happening? And so I opened another one and the same thing happened and it was like stabbing myself in the heart. And I was like, Ooh. And I guess it all just came at me at once and I just had to go to the back of the restaurant and cry.

Confessor #9: I had this gaping hole in my hand and patched it up with super glue from the corner store and just went back at it 'cause nobody else is gonna stand here and do the shucking thing.

Kevin: That's commitment. Yeah, I gotta say,

Confessor #10: Um, it feels a little cutthroat to get shell and I get protective of my shell that I'm collecting and I've had some requests and I have turned people down turns out I get, I get a little salty, I won't lie.

Kevin: Every farmer has a number. They may joke about it. They may wince. They may pretend not to know, but they know no one says it proudly. But in the oyster world, mortality is tuition part of paying your dues. And if you stay in the business long enough, you will kill oysters.

Confessor #1: Everyone will kill a million oysters or clams. And if you haven't done that yet, you probably haven't done aquaculture. But I hate that it's part of the sacrifice.

Confessor #3: If I were to go to school, I'd have a doctorates in how to kill an oyster.

Kevin: Are there mistakes you've made

Confessor #11: Of course, there always are.

Confessor #1: I was excited about what we could maybe do with shellfish in the Gulf, and I thought, wow, it would be great if we could grow some clams here. So I ordered clam seed and really ignored the knowledge that I, I intellectually, should have known the salinities were too low and it wouldn't work. But I went ahead and ordered those poor little clam seed and I put 'em into Sandy Bay, and I went back to check, not a single one of those clams were alive. And I could tell from the growth rings, they probably didn't make it more than a week 'cause they hadn't grown at all. So I sacrificed those clams to my naive hope that it would work and I, I regret it.

Confessor #5: There's a lot of things that can go awry in this business.

Confessor #16: One, which I've been keeping to myself is we, uh, had hatchery and I was given a bunch of brand new seed to try out a bottle nursery. A lot of water flows through pretty much a bottle. Gives the oysters, baby oysters, a lot of food, I didn't realize that it was not a set it and forget it. Um, it is a set it come back, check So I had set that thing and it looked great. I come back the next day, bottles are empty. And I didn't put the filter at the end of the bottle nursery. So. They said, Hey, what happened to the oysters? And I said, I don't know. I think it just overflowed. I, I did everything right and everything, and that was, about 200,000 little babies out the window. First time I'm telling anybody. So... 

Kevin: You've made some terrible mistakes.

Confessor #6: Of course. I've got a whole list of 'em. You know, you buy more than you can grow. Yeah. And so you overstock your bags and a bunch of them die. Yeah.

Confessor #12: Well, I think like any new industry and folks coming in there and they don't have their feet wet, there are failures.

Confessor #6: the second one is you don't realize that when they sell you a one millimeter oyster, you can't put it in a one millimeter mesh bag 'cause you'll come back tomorrow and they're all gone.

Confessor #10: this past year. I had a really bad time with spat on shell, and it's one of those where. I don't totally know what went wrong, but it went very wrong. I got maybe half the oysters I normally grow in a season, and I had some that were just complete duds. So that was 900 plus dollars down the drain.

Kevin: Did you try and figure out what happened?

Confessor #10: It was poor management of temperature changes. Maybe I wasn't as patient as I should have been. Um, and you kick yourself, it hurts. This is my world. I mean, I'm the oyster mama. I'm the oyster queen. I was killing all my oysters. It's terrible

Confessor #6: One that everybody makes. They get a little greedy and they put too many animals in the bag, or they buy more animals than they have gear to hold and they have labor to work on. And so in the middle of summer, you get behind and the fouling is overwhelming and the animals in the middle of the bag are dying and they're not growing because you let the greed get a little bit ahead of you.

Confessor #5: The thing about freezing oysters is that I have some experience with it in the past. Um, and so, on a recent trip to New York, I had some oysters at an event that got left over and I left them overnight in my cooler. And I was on a little date and I was like, oh, let me flex a little bit and I'll have some extra oysters and you know, show this person how to shuck and everything and when I went to get them, they were frozen solid. I ended up freezing like 300 oysters in my cooler in my truck overnight.

Confessor #3: I think I can win a gold medal for killing oysters. I mean, I, I genius at killing them.

Kevin: How many oysters would you say you've killed over the years?

Confessor #11: Oh, good lord. Um, I will say. A good quarter million we're lost to hurricanes, so that's technically not our fault. But they did get killed under our watch. They say that you're officially an oyster farmer after you've killed a million. Hopefully we aren't oyster farmers yet by that definition, but we could be close.

Confessor #3: You know, we, we continue to make these mistakes. I planted 8 million oysters in my career, but year one. Wiped them out. Year two wiped, 75% of them out. Year three was 50%. And it's like, okay, we're getting better at not killing them,

Kevin: Is the key to oyster farming, learning how not to kill oysters?

Confessor #3: I think so. I think so. That's my goal. Kill less, sell more.

Kevin: Some lessons come from biology, others come from gear. Bad luck, forgotten tasks, and the ancient tradition of learning the hard way. Some of those mistakes become stories, some become doctrine. And in oyster farming, the dividing line between the two is usually just time. 'cause eventually things will go sideways.

Confessor #6: we went out there on the hottest day of the year. And recovered all the gear. We were jumping in the water just to cool off. And if you know about mosquitoes, then you know that mosquitoes in Texas are about the size of an oyster. So we lost about like a pint of blood just from the mosquitoes sucking it out of us.

Confessor #13: We've had rough parts. I would say. We've used a pallet jack and we were setting our anchors in the sediment. And everything was going great. And then we went to the other side and they were just ripping out like butter, like over and over again. And it was so demoralizing because we would hand jack every single one. And this was like in the middle of July and we're on an aluminum boat and like a baking sheet just frying. So when it didn't stick or set. We were like, why are we here? I'm like, I don't know if we can do this anymore.

Confessor #16: It is a really embarrassing first day on the Oyster farm. My prop got caught in the line. It was about 45 degrees outside, so right along Scenic Highway in Pensacola, there was a naked man standing on the back of his boat jumping in the water to get the, uh, the line off. And it was so cold. I, I didn't want my clothes to be wet, so I jumped in. Then I dried myself off with my shirt, then put my hoodie on over that, put my pants back on, went back to the ramp, and the guy was like, what took you so long? And I was like, you don't want to know. Come to find out that he teaches me this trick about using a pole to get the rope off. Yeah. So that was my first real big mistake.

Confessor #3: I'm sure every farmer knows this feeling. It's called, a brick, when the bag gets a little too full. I curse myself as I'm pulling those bags out of the cages and I'm, if I ever do this again, I, but, uh, Done that a time or two. Definitely not a good feeling. I just wasn't expecting oysters to grow as fast as they did here. Oysters just don't stop eating.

Confessor #5: At this raw bar I used to work at we didn't have a commercial walk-in and we would just get these chest freezers and we bought these temperature probes on Amazon and there was basically like a heating function that you plugged in, and then the element would turn the freezer into a fridge. But the catch was is that you had to have the probe inside the freezer to make it a fridge. And you know, sometimes you're in service, you're moving fast, bags are going in and out. Um, occasionally that temp probe would fly out unbeknownst to folks during service. And then guess what happens? Turns back into a freezer.

Confessor #3: Uh, where do I start? My first day as an oyster farmer, I put the seed bags in the cages and every single one of 'em fell out and I felt like we're doomed from the start. This is not going well. And so we had to jump in after 'em and go fishing 'em out, and that's when I was like, wow. It would've been a great idea to put the doors and close 'em on the cage. Not a good start to a career.

Kevin: What did your brother have to say about that?

Confessor #3: I didn't tell him. I just kind of left that story out.

Kevin: So he came home that day and said, "Hey man, how was your day?" And you said,

Kevin: "It was all right. It was good."

Confessor #3: I just decided not to call him that evening.

Kevin: Some things you just don't need to know, right?

Confessor #3: Yep.

Kevin: You can plan, you can engineer, you can watch the buoys and say a quick prayer, and still sometimes none of that matters because storms don't negotiate. Ice doesn't forgive, and the tide doesn't care how much money, muscle, or love you put into the thing. That's why every oyster farmer knows that nature is not a forgiving teacher.

Confessor #6: Mother Nature will teach you a lesson the hard way. Everything's gonna hit the fan. It won't be pretty. It's actually kind of humorous, but it's sad that people don't need to make these same mistakes over and over again. Learn from the old timers.

Confessor #1: Uh, I had a small farm in Cape Cod Bay, and I made the mistake of reading the water temperature from a buoy that was out in the middle of the bay, so I thought we had more days than we did. Too late. I saw that Cape Cod Bay was starting to turn to slush and our oysters were gonna get creamed by the ice. So. I got out there, stacked up all our oyster seeds, started bringing those in, and one of the scariest moments of my life, the water was freezing behind me with the incoming tide, I could feel it pushing at the backs of my legs. The bay was feeling like it was gonna overwhelm me and my sin is not only that I didn't plan well, I then made the decision to leave the oysters and abandon them. My life was probably more important.

Confessor #3: It's not fun for a hurricane to hit you, but. it wasn't technically our fault because they were like, oh yeah, this hurricane's hitting Mexico. And then the next day they're like, oh, it's gonna hit this place called Matagorda Bay. This hurricane's coming in 12 hours. It was already getting rough. And we could have prepared for that last minute turn. Coming towards us, but we didn't. I had 800 cages out there at the time and I was like, what do I do? And then my subconsciousness was like, you ain't doing nothing. And we were like, let's do the sign of the cross and hope for the best. That's a kick in the gut.

Confessor #14: we've learned after several hurricanes, particularly, hurricane Helene, we lost 400,000 oysters, over 400 bags. One bag went all the way down around the horn of Florida, ended up in Dania Beach. A park ranger found it, flashed the RFID tag and called me. It was like, you've got to be kidding me. It's been gone for six months.

Kevin: Like, I'm on the other side of the state. Why are you calling me?

Confessor #14: How did that happen?

Confessor #4: I've been a dumb ass several times.

Kevin: How have you been a dumb ass?

Confessor #4: Well, when you bring in a cage culture system, and one of the reasons why you choose it is because it could be part of your hurricane plan. it has a feature where you can sink it. Okay? But when a hurricane comes, you don't sink it. I had these floating cages and here comes a storm and I just left those cages there floating there and sure enough the wind comes out of the east and takes those cages and ran. They just acted like a bowling ball, just crashed into that long line system and made an absolute mess. I should have sank them. That's why I brought the damn things to the Gulf of Mexico from Canada is 'cause you can sink 'em. Yeah, that was a dumb ass move.

Confessor #13: We have a big cabin that floats on our farm, and me and my crew will go and have lunch there.

Kevin: Mm-hmm.

Confessor #13: And we were eating and talking and having a great time. And then I look straight forward and there's a big black cloud and I'm like, that looks like it's coming our way. And then it just keeps coming. I'm like, okay, we gotta book it back. And we barely made it back in time like the gust of wind came. It was hard for us to drive and we barely made it back before, like everyone was drenched and I'm like, oh my gosh, that was so close.

Confessor #17: We lost on the order of 200 bags or so in Hurricane Helene, that's. Quite a few oysters. so we immediately after the storm went out and started trying to find our bags, 

 but we kind of stopped looking 20 miles away from the farm, you know, just wasn't worth the gas. 

Confessor #4: I used to spawn oysters at a hatchery. And I had this policy that if they didn't spawn, we just went ahead and shucked them and put in a bowl of ice water and made supper out of them because that's what they get for not spawning. You know, I talked dirty to 'em and everything, but they didn't spawn.

Kevin: You'd think talking dirty would do the trick, too.

Confessor #4: Well, Virginica oysters are very temperamental and you can talk nice to 'em. You can talk dirty to 'em. You can stand on your head. But if they don't wanna spawn, they're not gonna spawn.

Confessor #3: Everything was just like somebody got a fork and like twisted up like spaghetti and then just tossed it. It was all over the beach.

Kevin: Sometimes the hardest part of oyster farming isn't the water. It's not the oysters or the weather or the gear, that's the problem. Sometimes people are the problem. They impose regulations, politics, perceptions, and the slow bureaucracy of people who may not know the work, but can certainly shape it anyway. And while the water may be wild, sometimes the hardest current to navigate is human.

Confessor #11: When we started, the industry was new and we were new, so we ended up in a pretty contentious relationship with our regulators. Um, we didn't really understand the dynamic and they didn't understand the industry. so it definitely resulted in a lot of anger and animosity and kind of a negative era. So I would do that again over.

Confessor #6: I had some battles with state regulators because I tended to stick 'em pretty good in the press So they had it in for me. They came in one time into my shop with six enforcement agents looking for undersize. At the time, we had a three inch minimum size in the state, So we had a lot of these sub legal oysters in the refrigerator. And they came in and they, Dumped out 6,000 oysters onto the culling table and brought their ring and they start measuring them all. And sure enough, 50 or 60 of 'em were less than three inches. So they wrote me up and they wanted me to shut down and take my license away.

Confessor #15: And so it's been a hard task that we've been placed in this position of we want to make everyone happy, but you're never gonna make everyone happy. And so trying to find that sweet spot sometimes ruffles feathers and, um. Sometimes I feel like I have to tread on thin ice. I'm not from the oyster world. And so that's been one of my biggest challenges so far is maybe closing my mouth a little bit and just letting things ride.

Confessor #12: Well, that was privatization of the Bay boy and the Franklin County said, no way, Jose. And we basically were kicked outta the county.

Confessor #6: So I'm fighting and I'm going to court and, uh, spending a lot of money. And then finally I managed to get the law changed in the state. And so I'm in court and they bring out the oysters. They've been in the cooler for, I don't know, three years at this point. So they smell pretty bad to the court recorder. He starts to swoon. They stank up the room pretty bad, and the ombudsman says, now, wait a minute. Am I understanding this right, that you're trying to write this guy up for sub legal oysters and there's no such thing as a sub legal oyster anymore? Get outta here. And so I won that battle at great cost. But I wouldn't change a thing.

Kevin: And yet after all of this, people stay, not just stay. They mythologize, they defend, they romanticize, they speak for oysters. And even sometimes as oysters, at some point the oyster stops being inventory and becomes identity. A gospel according to oysters evolves. And from there devotion to this bivalve world is in a word inevitable.

Confessor #3: Oyster farming is like, how can I explain this? I feel like I'm addicted to oyster farming. Like I can't stop doing it. Even though you have all these failures, like, man, it's just so much fun to get out there and work on the farm and everything about it.

Confessor #12: You know, there's this attraction about oyster, it's romantic, and then the reality of it. So we have seen people get out of the business and then we see new people come in. But also, I work with growers that know what they're doing and they love it and they're making it their livelihood, and it's really great to work with those folks.

Confessor #1: I'll tell you what, that skiff was flipped over. All the oyster seed were there and they actually survived. So they showed me some mercy, some grace.

Kevin: The oyster gods were smiling at you.

Confessor #1: Yeah, yeah.

Confessor #7: I had a couple of, uh, bags where I took the oysters to the client's house, opened them there and they were fine. And when I started shucking them, they looked great, but you know, they were smelling. At that point, I had to make a call and I just apologized. I refunded the money and I was like, I'm sorry, but I can't serve you these oysters. They were very disappointed. So for that party, I went to Whole Foods and I picked up oysters and made them a little platter. They were very disappointed. So for that party, I went to Whole Foods and I picked up oysters and made them a little platter. 

Confessor #17: I would say that my biggest mistake is not making enough effort to really understand how oysters, exist, because it reflects a collective thinking of an organism that's not just an individual oyster, but some set of oysters. And me not having a full understanding and just going out there and saying, oh yeah, I'm gonna grow some oysters. I'm gonna sell 'em and eat 'em. That is a disservice to a majestic oyster, 

Kevin: So it sounds like you haven't committed too many oyster related sins.

Confessor #11: No. I'm a prude and an optimist, so you're not gonna get many sins outta me,

Confessor #13: I questioned my sanity at times, but you just gotta dig deeper.

Confessor #4: I can tell you a little story about a not so secret society called the Knights of the Mother of Pearl.

Kevin: The Knights of the Mother...

Confessor #4: The Knights of the Mother Pearl are those who are sworn to defend and honor the mother of Pearl so she can fulfill her destiny.

Kevin: And what is her destiny?

Confessor #4: Well, most people consider it's an environmental ecological role, and that's absolutely true, but it the mother of pearl's, true destinies to help humans procreate.

Kevin: Really?

Confessor #4: So we Knights of the Mother Pearl, and by the way, I'm the Grand Knight.

Kevin: Aren't you supposed to have like a Fez or a hat or something, you know?

Confessor #4: I am the Grand Knight of the not so secret society of the Mother of Pearl.

Kevin: It's an honor to be in your presence.

Confessor #4: We're sworn the defendant on her so she can fulfill her destiny. So any natural predator of an oyster is our enemy. We share our enemies with her, so whenever we see a blue crab, we're gonna kill it, stone crabs, black drum, oyster drills, those are the biggies. Anytime we see them, we kill 'em. 'cause we're defending the mother of Pearl.

Kevin: It's a noble cause at say.

Confessor #4: It's a noble cause. And the process of knighthood is very similar to traditional knighthood, but I'm using an empty beer bottle instead of a sword. But you still gotta kneel and I gotta tap you on your shoulder.

Kevin: So how does one approach and become a member of this not so secret society? Society?

Confessor #4: Well, you've gotta prove to me that you're worthy and there's lots of ways to prove you're worthy. And the central theme there is oysters are very, very much part of your life. They've gotta be a focal point of your life.

Kevin: Oyster obsession is a prerequisite,

Confessor #4: Oyster obsession is kind of a prerequisite. Yeah. The role you're playing here and the work you're doing with your podcast is definitely knighthood material. You are certainly expressing your desire for the mother of Pearl.

Kevin: I mean, everybody wants to be knighted at some point in their lives, but over oysters?

Kevin: The only thing more interesting than oysters are the people who work with them. There's a personal side to being part of this oyster world. Beyond the gear, the tides, the losses and the winds, the work lands differently for everyone. For some, it's a livelihood. For some it's a calling, and for others it becomes something maybe a little harder to define, but if you listen closely, each story carries its own meaning because no two people come to oysters the same way.

Confessor #7: Sometimes I just want it to be me and my oysters.

Confessor #8: I am usually a happy. Anxiety free, optimistic person. I don't tend to remember or linger on negative experiences that really affected or traumatized me from doing this work. So I don't know, Kevin, I don't know what I would confess here or say that I lose sleep over.

Kevin: Well, that's wonderful actually. I call that self absolution. If you absolve yourself for it, you don't need to remember it or ever think about it again.

Confessor #4: The mother of pearl is very sultry. And she has her hooks in me. Oh my God.

Kevin: What's your name and what do you do?

Confessor #9: Yeah, I'd rather not say, but I'm a shucker in the area.

Confessor #11: Um, I'm exhausted. So, you know, doing a lot of things. I stay, uh, questioning of why, which, feels, you know, like maybe you're not supposed to do that.

Confessor #7: I don't think I'm capable of it, but I would love to farm. That would be something that'd be cool as hell. Yeah. it's a lot of hard work. I'm a city boy, but It would be amazing to be part of it somehow was somewhere, you know, maybe down the line.

Kevin: I still want to hear exactly how the mother of Pearl results in human procreation.

Confessor #4: Well, everybody knows oysters make you horny,

Kevin: Right?

Confessor #4: Classic story of Casanova. And when I was a master's student working on my master's degree, I wanted to prove scientifically beyond a shadow of a doubt whether or not oysters were an aphrodisiac because I was a newly wed and I thought collecting data would be a lot of fun. My graduate committee wouldn't go with it. So I ended up coming up with other research topic.

Confessor #9: Um, um, I have shucked oysters in bed before with a partner. And, uh, used her back as a shucking table and yeah, that was definitely pretty spicy.

Kevin: Was it just one or did you have like a dozen?

Confessor #9: It was like four.

Kevin: Have you become an oyster snob?

Confessor #7: Oh yeah, maybe. I think so. A little bit. Yeah. Unfortunately.

Confessor #8: I thought this was anonymous.

Kevin: For many, there's a moment when the relationship with oysters shifts almost without realizing it. People become defenders. Spend enough time around these folks and you'll hear it. People stepping in, correcting the record, setting things straight because at some point oysters stop being something people just work with and start being something they stand up for.

Confessor #4: Oysters of 99% seawater. And so sometimes when I hear someone say, oh, the last time I ate oysters, they made me sick. I said, well, how many did you eat? Four or five dozen? I went, well, you know, that's comparable to over a quart approaching a half gallon of sea water. If you drank a quart of sea water, you'd get the runs. So it had nothing to do, whether it was a virus or bacteria that caused you, you just drank too much Seawalk.

Kevin: You don't have vibrio. You're just a pig.

Confessor #4: Exactly. It ain't salmonella, it ain't norovirus, you just drank too much seawater. Gluttiny!

Confessor #15: We're bringing live oysters into the classroom and letting kids put their hands on a live oyster, um, a lot of times they ask me if they are going to get bit by the oysters and we've gone over the anatomy at this point and I'm like, well, do oysters have teeth? But then once I'm like, they're not gonna bite you, they're not going to hurt you. It's like holding a wet rock.

Confessor #11: After I became part of this industry. I started to see oysters as the best role model for humanity. They form community, they provide amazing ecosystem services, and they, um, just serve their entire life. So I think more humans should look at 'em. They're real leaders.

Kevin: And then there's this thought one that comes up more than you might expect. What if oysters could talk, what would they say? Not just about the water or the tides, but about us. The way we handle them, the way we shape their lives, the way we decide when their story ends. If you spend enough time around them, it's not hard to feel like they might already be saying something to us.

Kevin: If some of those oysters that perished had a chance to tell you what they think,

Confessor #10: I think they might say I was a bad mother.

Kevin: If we could hear them speak, what do you think they would've said when you abandoned them in the ice?

Confessor #1: Oh yeah. I, I, I don't wanna imagine that.

Kevin: They might have acknowledged that you only hurt the ones you love, so, you know.

Confessor #1: I hope so.

Kevin: What do you think those oysters would say to you if they could?

Confessor #16: I'm free! 

Kevin: If one of your oysters could tell you how it feels about how you've treated it and its brethren, what do you think of it say?

Confessor #11: I call myself the oyster matriarch. So hopefully they feel really loved, but they might say, why have you deprived me of being attached to my family and put me in all of this turmoil? They get knocked and banged around and I don't think our local wild oysters appreciate that.

Kevin: And what would you say to the oysters

Confessor #11: Grow.

Kevin: So if an oyster could communicate what do you think it would say to you? 

Confessor #17: I think a little glimmer of hope saying, alright, there, there, there may be some hope for some humans. 

Kevin: So if one of the oysters that you've grown as a representative for all the other oysters you've grown could talk to you, what do you think it would say?

Confessor #4: Well, I know what they'll say. 'cause I speak oyster.

Kevin: You speak oyster?

Confessor #4: Yeah. You wanna hear some?

Kevin: I do. ... That's fascinating.

Confessor #4: Yeah. She's very pleased with you. I speak for her. She's very pleased.

Kevin: Well, you are the mother of Pearl Oracle, so you can speak for her. Well,

Confessor #4: yeah. You know, do you wanna hear some more?

Kevin: Yeah. …

Kevin: Look, no. Confession is complete without consequence. There is penance to be paid. Hot sauce, non-dominant hands, public slurping, atonement- oyster style, but maybe confessions aren't really about absolution. Maybe they're just about being able to laugh, admit it, and go back to work a little lighter than before.

Kevin: You are hereby fully absolved of that sin. It no longer needs to weigh on you in any way.

Confessor #9: Thank you. I feel so much better.

Kevin: Because you've painfully bared your soul you are fully absolved. However, the penance that you have to pay is you have to shuck five oysters in your non-dominant hand.

Confessor #5: Ooh.

Kevin: And slurp them and you're not allowed to talk to anybody the whole time you do it.

Confessor #5: Oh my God. That's gonna be challenging.

Kevin: So, your confession has been heard. Absolution is now complete. You do have some penance to pay, however.

Confessor #1: Okay.

Kevin: You need to shuck three fresh oysters and put five extra drops of hot sauce in each one before you slurp it.

Confessor #1: I, I will do that.

Confessor #16: Feel the burn. Yes. So that the oysters get a little bit of payback.

Kevin: Between doing it on the hottest day of the year and getting your blood sucked up by mosquitoes, I think you paid your penance for that oyster sin.

Confessor #3: I think so. I think so.

Kevin: Your absolution is complete and your sins have been washed away. 

Confessor #16: Thank you. I feel amazing. 

Kevin: There is just one thing though. You do have to pay a little penance. 

Confessor #16: What do we have? 

Kevin: So,you need to describe one of those oysters to a complete stranger as if it's a dating app that you're describing. 

Confessor #16: Do you want me to describe it now or, 

Kevin: Yeah, let's take a shot. 

Confessor #16: Okay. Well look at this beautiful baby Oh my gosh. I can't say baby. I'm gonna talk about like a Tinder thing. Hold on, hold on. We're backing up. Hold on. We're backing up. Uh, look at this beautiful oyster. It's got such a voluptuous round front to it, and the back is so nice and defined. It's got such a round cup like when you shuck that oyster open, It's just so beautiful and sometimes it gets in your mouth and it just, oh, it's so good. 

Kevin: I think I need a moment. 

Confessor #16: Oh, I do too. 

Kevin: I do have to give you a little bit of penance to make sure that you're fully absolved of all of your oysters since,

Confessor #3: Okay.

Kevin: What is it you need to shuck three oysters with no glove, with your non-dominant hand. Oh, wow. And then put six extra drops of hot sauce in each one and slurp 'em down. Avoid the blood. Pay those oysters back.

Confessor #3: That's fair enough. I've killed enough of them. I can handle a little pain for 'em.

Kevin: Amen to that.

Kevin: So whether you are actually the murderer of innocent oysters or not.

Confessor #10: Yes,

Kevin: Your sins have now been washed away.

Confessor #10: Thank you. I feel much better.

Kevin: Well, I hereby by the power vested in me by the sea, the tides, and of course the oysters oyster of all of you, of all of those sins.

Confessor #4: Thank you very much. I'll sleep better tonight.

Kevin: I thought you might course, and course I think the appropriate penance is, you need to slurp three oysters in public, like it's a lover you've been waiting for for years.

Confessor #4: That's a lovely penance. Yes. Amen.

Confessor #13: Pray for me…

Kevin: You know, there's something about hearing people admit when it went wrong, not polished, not rehearse, just honest in another setting. These might sound like failures or mistakes or misjudgment, things you'd rather not say out loud. But in the shellfish confessional, they landed differently because every one of those stories carried something with it, a lesson, a scar, a better decision the next time the tide turns. And maybe that's what this confessional really reveals. Not that oyster people sometimes get it wrong, but that they keep going. They show up after the storm, after the loss, after the cut, the bad call, the long day that didn't go the way it was supposed to.

They go back out

Because somewhere along the way the oysters stopped being just a thing they grow or shuck or serve and became something they're connected to protective of even a little in awe of. And if there's an absolution in all of this, it's probably not in being forgiven, it's being willing to come back and do the work again, a little wiser, a little humbler, and maybe feeling better than the day before.

This has been the Shellfish Confessional. Special thanks to the amazing Oyster South team and The Nature Conservancy for their generous support in this experiment. And of course, to all of those who dared enter the confessional. While I've listed your names in the show notes, I've left them out here. But you know who you are.

Thanks so much for listening to OYSTER-ology. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow rate and share it. It helps other oyster lovers find the show and maybe confess their own sins. And please leave a comment on this episode or maybe even leave a confession of your own. I'll read everyone, and I would love your thoughts. And as a guiding reminder of the goal in growing oysters:

Confessor #3: Kill less, sell more.

Kevin: I'll be stepping away from the mic for a short break before season three, so stay with me, revisit an episode you may have missed or want to hear again. And I'll be back soon, stuck a little deeper in the oyster mud, and ready to pry open the shell of other interesting oyster topics.