Arsters

My friend Freddy and I were sitting in a bar in Eastport, Maryland after a day on the water. Eastport, protestations to the contrary, is a suburb of tony Annapolis. But where Annapolis has gone upscale with “Millionaire’s moorings” near the public dock, Eastport remains decidedly blue collar, populated with mechanics, teachers, carpenters, watermen, boat builders; people who actually make things work.

Freddy had invited me to join him on his old wooden sailboat for a day’s cruise and I jumped at the chance. Although not a sailor, I know my way around a boat. Besides, it was an opportunity to see some isolated Chesapeake Bay lighthouses up close.

It had been a long, windblown, sun-struck day. We were both burned rosy red, with the only pale skin covered by our sunglasses, giving us the look of raccoons on a piece of black and white negative film. I was trying to doctor a headache with a glass of whiskey and a bottle of Miller’s finest when the upscale couple strolled in. He was in a pastel polo shirt and khakis, sockless feet in polished(!) deck shoes. She was in painted-on jeans and heels, nary a blonde hair out of place. They sat around the corner of the U-shaped bar and he ordered two drafts (obviously slumming), and a dozen oysters on the half-shell. “You know” he said with a barely perceptible leer, “they say oysters are aphrodisiacs.” His companion giggled and went off to find the lady’s room.

Freddy glanced up at me, the crow’s feet crinkling at the corners of his eyes, and ordered a couple dozen for us. “Just because I’m getting oysters (he pronounced it ‘arsters’ like all good Maryland boys), don’t mean I’m easy.” This said as the cute blonde was returning to the bar. She must have heard, as a small frown crossed her perfect Maybellenned lips.

If you grew up near tidewater, oysters are a food, not something to put lead in your pencil. I’ve eaten them fried, fricasseed, steamed, scalded, scalloped, baked, barbequed, and raw. I’ve had them in pies, stews, and Rockefeller. There is something elemental about the mild salt tang, the slight metallic flavor from oyster’s copper-base blood, and the way they cringe when you squirt them with lemon juice (that’s how you know they are fresh). Just think of them as Chesapeake sushi.

Beyond mere food, oysters are history. Oysters made Chesapeake Bay and the tidewater culture that embraces it. Chesapeake itself means “Great Shellfish Bay”. Archeologists can spot a pre- European contact Indian village site by the overgrown piles of discarded shells. Visit old tobacco plantations from Mount Vernon to Cape Charles; each has tucked away, amid the poison ivy and kudzu, a mound of old oyster shells quietly dissolving back into the soil. Indentured servants and slaves were fed oysters; cheap protein and free for the harvesting in the shallows. One of the first labor strikes in American history rose from indentured servants complaining about having to eat oysters day in and day out.

When John Smith explored the Bay in the 1500’s, he found oysters so extensive that they formed reefs, breaking the surface at low tide and a hazzard to navigation. The European settlers adapted the Indian appetites and watercraft. Soon, schooners called bugeyes, sporting two raked masts and hulls built from nine old-growth pitch pine logs, were hauling dredges across the reefs. After centuries of onslaught, the reefs soon dwindled to bars; smaller, shorter, and harder to get at, but still chock full of oysters. Bugeyes gave way to skipjacks—single masted plank-built sloops that could handle the new conditions. These graceful craft began the evolution of clipper ships, the acme of sailing ship development.

Oysters are vital to Chesapeake Bay, in large part responsible for its teeming biodiversity and are the Bay’s filtering system. Oysters are what ecologists call a “keystone species”. Keystone species are defined, like the Cheshire Cat, by what’s left when they are gone. Pull a keystone species out of the environmental pyramid, and you get a resulting cascade of unforeseen changes and extinctions of species that, at first glance, have nothing to do with oysters drop in abundance and associated ecosystem function. Ecologists estimate that, at the turn of the 20th century, a volume water equivalent to that of the entire Chesapeake Bay was filtered through an oyster every three days. A single oyster runs 50 gallons of water a day through its gills, feeding on and removing algae and bacteria.

Oysters’ prodigious filtering capacity was the major influence on submerged vegetation. Oysters filter feed on one celled algae, keeping the water clear enough for sunlight to penetrate to the bottom, allowing aquatic grasses to thrive. The grasses formed nurseries for crabs and fish of all sorts.

In the 19th Century, sail switched to steam and gasoline engines and the plunder became serious. Maryland made feeble attempts at conservation, such as limiting dredging to sail only, but to little avail. It is an adage among fisheries management people that governments don’t enact management plans until the resource has already dwindled to critical levels. After being pounded for 400 years, the oysters have seemingly given up. Down to one percent of their former populations, they are no longer a major functional part of Chesapeake ecology.

Eastport once had nearly 20 oyster shucking houses and watermen tied up at nearby Annapolis City Dock to off load their bushels of bivalves. Skipjacks and smaller working craft were common in the harbor. The bartender where Fred and I sat was a part-time waterman who knew his way around an oyster. I watched as he deftly opened one oyster after another, his short razor-sharp knife pushing through the hinge at the back of the shell. He kept his non-knife hand, the one holding the shell, in a chain mail glove, looking like something out of Beowulf. A quick twist and the shell was open. Another twist and the morsel was free.

Fred and I slurped down a dozen each, washing them down with draft beer. When her companion left to go to the men’s room, the cute blonde slipped Fred her phone number with the pantomimed “call me.” Maybe there is something after all to the aphrodisiac story.