After slavery, oystering offered a lifeline. Now sewage spills threaten to end it all

Posted on September 1, 2021 by Admin

Black people are disproportionately suffering under the weight of a sewage crisis in Virginia, a symptom of decades of neglect by local governments

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On a cold winter morning early this year, Mary Hill was helping her 101-year-old mother get ready for the day when she received a distressing email alert. Tens of millions of gallons of raw sewage were heading for her prized family oyster beds.

Yet Hill was not surprised that the wastewater pipe built in the 1940s had succumbed to corrosion. “Here we go again,” she thought grimly.

An oyster: they can hear the breaking waves | Helen Sullivan

Posted on June 14, 2021 by Admin

To eat an oyster raw is to eat it alive

On the oyster’s edge, under the sea, on a rock, a tree root, a bamboo pole, a pebble, a tile or another shell, the bivalve’s cilia – from the Latin for eyelash – are waving. Together, they move water over the oyster’s gills – its shell is open, its muscles are relaxed. The oyster has lungs. It has a three-chambered heart. An hour passes; the oyster has filtered five litres of water. The oyster has listened to the breaking waves: it opens and closes according to the tides.

One valve is the cupped half of the shell, the other is the flat half. A cargo ship sounds its horn. The oyster shuts in fright.

Brittany oyster farms hit by gastroenteritis epidemic

Posted on January 6, 2020 by Admin

Farmers blame ‘ecological emergency’ on inadequate treatment of sewage

A gastroenteritis epidemic sweeping France has hit oyster farmers in Brittany after the virus was found in shellfish.

Health authorities have banned the fishing and selling of oysters in the bay around Mont-Saint-Michel and other shellfish farming areas on France’s north-western coast until further notice.

Pearl farming in Japan – in pictures

Posted on April 22, 2019 by Admin

Japan still dominates the global cultured pearl market, despite a fall in specialised pearl farmers. In the past 10 years it has produced annually about 20 tonnes of farmed pearls