SubscribeThe term "red tide" is also commonly used to describe harmful algal blooms on the northern east coast of the United States, particularly in the Gulf of Maine. This type of bloom is caused by another species of dinoflagellate known as Alexandrium fundyense. These blooms of organisms cause severe disruptions in fisheries of these waters as the toxins in these organism cause filter-feeding shellfish in affected waters to become poisonous for human consumption due to saxitoxin.
Decades ago, oysters were not harvested or sold in the summertime mainly because of the heat. But it is no longer difficult to keep oysters chilled in transit or in a restaurant, even on the sultriest days. Oysters were also avoided in the summer because that is their spawning season, when they are less plump and briny-sweet. "It's bizarre," said Mr. Rowley, the seafood consultant. "People love to eat raw oysters sitting out on a deck with a cold beer in summer even though it's not the best time of year to eat them."Many people, including Gourmet contributing editor and seafood guru Jon Rowley prefer eating oysters during he r months. Rowley lists his favorites in the link.
Though oysters still spawn when waters warm in the summer, the problem is now more navigable than it was a few decades ago. Many restaurateurs and chefs buy oysters from areas where the water stays colder in summer. "Ours is a site with oceanic water," said Mr. Malinowski of Fishers Island Oyster Farm. "When the water is this cold the oysters sometimes don't spawn at all."
Sandy Ingber, the buyer for the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station, said, "Oysters spawn for a few weeks, not all summer, so there are always some available that are not spawning." He added that he rejects any shipments he receives of spawning oysters.
"Today there are many more varieties from so many different areas, so it's easier to find non-spawning oysters than it was in the past," he said.
"Summer and early fall is my peak season," he says. He is currently averaging 500 bushels (about 60,000 oysters) a week.
There is no off season for Pacific oysters because they are hybridized.
In a natural oyster cycle, oysters spawn during the summer, when water temperatures rise. When putting its energies into spawning, oyster flesh turns soft and milky, the opposite of the crisp, clean taste and mouthfeel that delight oyster lovers. Pacific oysters have been altered to spawn very lightly, so that most of us cannot taste the difference in the summer.
Most of the farmers in Tomales Bay now grow these hybrids, called triploids, and buy their seedlings from hatcheries.
p 79 "In the fall, the oysters would be pickled and shipped out. Although New Yorkers ate oysters all year long, it was believed that the oyster in the months without R – May, June July, and August – were of inferior quality and so they waited for the better oysters to come in the fall. This is an ancient and somewhat mythological belief. In 1599, William Butler, a contemporary of Shakespeare, wrote, "It is unreasonable and unwholesome in all months that have not R in their name to eat oysters." The myth has an element of truth in the case of New York. Oysters take their cue to begin spawning when the water warms up, which is in May, and it is true that spawning oysters tend too be thin, transluscent, and generally less appealing. Some argued that letting the beds rest during spawning season was a good conservation measure. Summer oysters are, however, perfectly healthy unless spoiled in the market by summer heat."
p 83 - "In 1715, the colonial government, as a conservation measure, banned oystering in the months without Rs, May 1 to September 1, because it was the egg-laying season."
p 102 - "In 1807, the city suspended the law that barred letting oysters enter the city in the summer months."
p 132 - "Supplying oysters to the great market only sixty-five miles away was heavy and dangerous work. The oysters were transported by schooners and wagons. A schooner would carry about seven hundred bushels, about fifty thousand pounds, through Fire Island Inlet at the most dangerous time of the year, the R months."
p205-206 - "In 1855, New York City mayor Henry Wood, responding to the oyster panic the previous year, moved to rigorously enforce the generally ignored laws restricting oyster sales. In 1839, a law had been passed reviving an old law about months lacking R. It outlawed the sale of oysters in New York from May 1 to September 1. This had created a festive moment in restaurants and markets when the oyster season reopened in September. Municipalities were free to lengthen the off-season, and the Great South Bay had stayed closed until September 15 and the Brooklyn beds didn't open until October 1. But by 1855, when Mayor Wood began rigorously enforcing the law, most New Yorkers had forgotten about it. By then, New Yorkers were not panicked anymore and they laughed at the old-fashioned law. Ballou's Pictorial in the fall of 1855 wrote of oystermen who had started spelling the month "Orgust" so that it would have an R. Even then this was was already an old joke.
The debate about the R month continued throughout the century. In September, at the opening of the 1883 season, a satirical New York Times editorial said, "There are eager lovers of the oyster who will eat 'fries' and 'broiled' up to 12 P.M. on the 30th day of April, but no good man will touch an oyster after the hour has struck." The article suggests that the unlucky Italians can't eat oysters because Gennaio, the Italian name for January, has no R. "On the other hand, the Arab of the desert can eat oysters in certain Mohammedan months which contain 'R', while in the corresponding Christian months the gracious 'R' is wanting.""It was mainly with a view to oysters that Julius Caeser reformed the calendar. He found that what the almanach called the summer occurred late in the autumn, so that in the months in which oysters were particularly desirable no 'r' existed. He therefore pushed back the 'r' less months into the heat of summer and enabled the Roman to feast on oysters on the true first of September. Moreover he invented leap year merely for the purpose of adding another oyster day to February. It was by these two grand strokes of genius that Caeser won the enthusiastic support of the Roman oyster dealers and endeared himself to every Roman whose taste for oysters had not been destroyed by the artificial and unwholesome dishes affected by the rich and dissolute members of the Pompeiian party."
posted by keep it tight at 5:45 PM on June 19, 2008