Oysters

Well, the predicted wind never happened last night. So much for that weather report! Pretty calm today!

Had a walk around the island, stopped for a chat with friends Islandcat and hubby (and got good soup!) and since the tide was out walked back along the beach to pick up any flotsam...there was very little.

So I thought I'd blip the oysters (most of those whitish oblong shapes) on the beach in our bay, since they are in trouble. When we were first here in 1990, there were none. The neighbor across the bay brought some spat from up north to put on his shore. (since starfish eat oysters, he also got rid of all the starfish nearby, but that's another story) In several years, the oysters were all over the beaches on this end of the island, (and the starfish were back) They are Giant Pacific Oysters (Japanese oysters) and grow very large. We do have some guests that love to eat them, if they can get them little, over an open fire...or every other gourmet way, but generally we don't (except for an occasional chowder, back when I was cooking :-) ) Now that ocean acidification is occurring, there isn't enough calcium carbonate for them to make hard shells, or enough spat. The oyster farms in Washington state are in real trouble with alarmingly decreasing supplies. We're wondering if we will see any change while we are still coming here. They are filter feeders and I'm sure there's enough plankton for them to eat, but they are also food for oyster catchers and gulls, snails, and starfish (and sea otters, but we just have river otters and I'm not sure they eat them...) Nature's balance will be disturbed yet again.....