Virginia has bet big on oysters in recent years. (Travis Croxton/Rappahannock Oyster Company) Benefits economic and ecological “It’s hit us at absolutely the worst time possible.” An empty facility at Rappahannock Oyster Company in Topping, Va. “We have 10 million oyster seeds coming in for our nursery,” said Croxton. And at this time of year, many producers have already ordered their oyster “seed,” the term used for the immature bivalves that oyster farmers buy to raise, and are waiting for it to arrive. Once they mature enough to be sold for consumption, their space is taken by younger oysters raised in nurseries.īut if there’s nowhere for growers to sell their mature oysters, there’s also nowhere for the juveniles - which will become future crops and future profits - to go. Most growers raise the bivalves for market on a 12- to 24-month schedule. “I don’t know that shuckhouses are even taking oysters right now,” said Brice-Rowland.Ĭompounding the problem is the cycle on which oyster aquaculture operates. Croxton said his company’s oyster sales are down to about 3 percent of their normal volume. Ralph Northam to close their dining rooms March 24. We’re not an essential foodstuff,” said Croxton.īecause of that, much of the business Virginia oyster growers do is with restaurants, all of which were ordered by Gov. But unlike other agricultural products, oysters aren’t really a necessity - and so consumers aren’t rushing to fill their cupboards with them. The industry has faced a double whammy: like other agricultural products, it’s tied to timelines that can be neither slowed nor halted, leaving producers faced with unloading their stores or else seeing them rot. “They’re animals that are growing.” ‘Absolutely the worst time possible’ĬOVID-19 has hit virtually every sector of the economy hard, and oysters are no exception. “Whereas you can kind of mothball a restaurant … the farm is actually a living thing,” said Travis Croxton, co-owner of Rappahannock Oyster Company, which operates a facility in Topping as well as restaurants in Virginia, Washington, D.C., Charleston and Los Angeles. The oysters they’ve raised are piling up, but there’s nowhere for them to go. All up and down the coasts and waterways of Virginia, where John Smith once reported the oysters “lay as thick as stones,” the farmers who cultivate this prized marine resource are faced with a tough predicament. Rogue Oysters isn’t alone in that predicament. We’ll have to find a way to get rid of them.” Now, she said, “We have 300,000 oysters in the water right now that may not ever find a home we intended for them. “Our orders basically stopped in early March,” said Brice-Rowland. This year they finally hired their first employee, with a planned start date in April. They started selling to other oyster businesses that supplied restaurants through the wholesale market and laid plans to break into direct restaurant sales themselves. The four-year-old enterprise founded by husband-wife duo Taryn Brice-Rowland and Aaron Rowland in the Northern Neck community of Lancaster had already taken a hit early in its life when record-breaking rains swept through Virginia in 2018, diluting the salty waters where the bivalve thrives and wiping out that year’s crop.īut the pair persisted, beginning again the laborious two-year process of raising oysters from seed to shell. 2020 was supposed to be Rogue Oysters’ year.
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