Recovering Oysters

Hard work and lots of research mean oysters in Long Island Sound are doing better now and might be doing beter still in the future.

The Fish Cellar, in Mount Kisco, makes sure it identifies the oysters it sells by place of origin. We've always preferred east coast oysters (the best I've had were from Fishers Island) to Pacific Northwest oysters, although I'm not sure I'd put it exactly in the same terms as Inke Sunila, who works for the Bureau of Aquaculture in the Connecticut Agriculture department. She opined:

The Pacific oyster is slimy and gray and looks like something hanging from a cow's nose.

I hate to point this out but the Hartford Courant reporter spelled the name of Bloom's oyster boat wrong and got the name of the Norwalk Islands wrong. The Mary Colman (not Coleman) is above; the Catherine M. Wedmore, another of Norm Bloom's oyster boats, is below.