The oyster’s story

Like lobsters, oysters were once considered cheap eats. They were abundant the 1800’s, eaten by the working class, served in pies in Britain and as street food in American cities.

Then the locomotive was invented. Railways allowed fresh oysters from the Chesapeake Bay, Massachusetts and Long Island Sound to be shipped inland, fueling a boom. Voracious harvesting led to overfishing and near collapse of native stocks by the 1880s. The price of fresh oysters went through the roof.

Not coincidentally, Oysters Rockefeller were invented in 1899 by Jules Alciatore at his family's famous Antoine's Restaurant in New Orleans, where it is still on the menu.

Such a newly valuable crop attracted much experimentation with farming techniques. The Cotuit Oyster Company in Massachusetts, established in 1837, is considered the oldest, continuously operating oyster farm in the U.S., making it a foundational New England aquaculture venture.

Today, Long Island Sound has at least seven well-established oyster farms, and you can discover most of them on NOAA Fisheries’ “Long Island Sound's Shellfish Growers are Citizen Scientists” interactive map (missing is Stonington relative newcomer Riverhawk Oysters.)

Restaurants all over Connecticut now vie for Oyster Honors (Go Oyster Club!), and CT VISIT even sports a wonderful “Oyster Trail Map” (click to enlarge.)

The only downside to this historic rebound has been what to do with the millions of oyster shells generated as waste. Various ideas were floated: grind them up for fertilizer amendments, use them on driveways, leave them in the landfill. Not good.

Enter Tim Macklin, Todd Koehnke and the nascent Collective Oyster Recycling & Restoration program. The two Fairfield residents and shellfishermen saw that other states had developed shell recycling programs. They started CORR as a small operation, initially collecting shells in their own cars before expanding, with support from the Fairfield Shellfish Commission. How did that work out?