The Last Oyster Tongers of Apalachicola

> Oyster tongers work on their own schedule, with no boss, getting paid in cash based on their daily harvest. [...] Profits are based on market price and how hard you work. There’s a cowboy romance to the independent industry.

My family oystered on the Chesapeake. Some still do. My childhood was spent playing through the ruins of the oyster house we built on the point, past its heyday and abandoned by the time I was born.

Can attest to how much of a long game it is. You make moves for five years in the future, and reap the results of what someone did five years ago. And the profits or losses are largely born by you: not many oysters subsidies for not harvesting...

And it has always been contentious. Often violent. About what you'd expect if your savings account were a sack of money sitting next to your mailbox. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oyster_Wars

But it's also a beautiful way of life. The old timers know more about the nuances of the coast, contours of the bottom, and tides than I'd imagine would fit into a human head.

And, for now, my 97 year old great uncle still takes his skiff out and tongs every now and then. (Knock on wood)

And here's encouraging people in the Apalachicola region, or those interested from afar, to act for the next decade. Apalachicola Riverkeeper and Chattahoochee Riverkeeper are good places to start. https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/593550426 https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/582095413

Now that the Florida lawsuit is resolved, hopefully the tristate area can get back to negotiating a comprehensive plan in good faith.

I've lived most my life in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River basin. My Granddad would take us down the Chattahoochee River in the summer on his boat toward Apalachicola and we'd swim at the beaches and eat at Boss Oyster and climb up and slide down a huge sand dune along the bank of the river. It's a shame this happened to it.

> I ask Schoelles why he keeps the journals and what will become of them. “Just for the hell of it, really,” he says. “They’ll probably get thrown in the trash when I’m gone.”

That's a pessimistic thing to say, but I can't dispute it or say I feel differently. Individuals can do everything they possibly can to save an environment -- Not "the environment", a distant idea of rain forests and coral reefs, but a particular environment, one they've spent their lives in and depend on for their livelihood -- and another individual's decision 200 miles upstream (or 1,000 miles upstream, or on another continent) can undo all their work and more, and there's nothing they can do about it.

I recently read the book Big Oyster by Mark Kulansky and it is full of interesting history and trivia about oysters and the New York City area.

Couple highlights:

- Despite a very poor "nutrient to harvest cost" ratio, humans have been eating oysters for thousands of years

- Oyster shells were piled up by Native Americans. These piles were never more than a certain distance from the shore (I believe something like 60 ft). In addition, the shells at the bottom of these piles were usually larger than at the top implying that over harvesting led to smaller oysters both then and now

- Despite different sizes, shapes etc all oysters on the eastern seaboard of the United States are all the same species

The book is full of great lines too e.g. "New York is not a city that plans; it creates situations and then deals with them"