The bizarre snowstorm that blasted across the Cape late last week, downing trees, sparking power outages, and snarling traffic, also took a heavy toll on the local oyster industry.
The bizarre snowstorm that blasted across the Cape late last week, downing trees, sparking power outages, and snarling traffic, also took a heavy toll on the local oyster industry.
Farmers in Wellfleet are discovering that the steel rebar beds used to cultivate oysters were churned and twisted by the storm's high winds and seas, leaving 30-foot balls of metal tumbleweed. Tens of thousands of young oysters were killed on sandswept portions of Indian Neck Beach and Black Fish Creek. And farmers are left to somehow untangle the gnarled metal racks in hopes of salvaging next year's crop as they try to meet the immediate demand for the holidays.
"We got slammed," said John Connors, owner of Wellfleet Bay Oyster Co. "I've never seen anything like this. The racks were pushed easily three lengths of a football field away from where they were originally, and they're twisted to the point they look like pretzels. It's stunning. I've had some losses, but some people were wiped out completely."
Andrew Koch, Wellfleet's town shellfish constable, is still collecting reports to assess the overall damage.
So far, he estimates that nearly a dozen farmers each lost between $50,000 and $100,000, while many others took a slight hit in next year's crop costing them a few thousand dollars.
"It's a shame -- a few guys got hurt real bad," Koch said. "I feel really bad. Some of them have crop insurance but the problem with that is that you have to prove what you had and what you had lost. Even then you only get a percentage of what you lost. Insurance definitely won't make up for the losses."
The damage to the oyster beds appears to be one of the most significant lingering effects from Friday's storm, which also left about 75 customers still without power Monday and researchers looking for clues to why more than 30 dolphins and pilot whales stranded themselves along the shores of Cape Cod Bay.
The storm's wrath is only the latest frustration for Cape oyster farmers, who sell to restaurants as far away as San Francisco and who were forced to close during the summer because of red tide, a toxic algae outbreak affecting shellfish.
"I've been doing this for 25 years and I haven't seen anything like this before," said Richard Kraus, head of the Aquacultural Research Corp., a hatchery that provided seeds to oyster farmers.
Kraus said his business suffered thousands of dollars worth of damage to greenhouses and hatcheries.
"It wasn't a great growing year to begin with," he said. "I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop." Farming oysters is a delicate process that takes years of commitment.
The oysters start off as juveniles, too small to sell. They are placed in mesh bags and hooked to metal racks about 12 to 19 inches below the sea surface. With water churning above and below them, the oysters remain safe from predators as they feed and grow for up to two years, said farmers.
During the worst of winter, the farmers pull in their crop, sometimes burying them in sand pits.
During that time, oysters lie alive and dormant for up to three months. By the first week of March, they are put back out to sea on the metal beds.
The last two weeks of December are the busiest weeks of the year for oyster farmers because of high demand and bringing in crops for the winter, said Bob Wallace, who started Billingsgate Shellfish in Wellfleet in 1982.
Wallace said he may have lost a couple thousand dollars worth of oysters. "I was very fortunate," he said. "But it's a particularly bad time for this to happen. My bed looked OK, but there were some tangled racks that looked like a steel ball of yarn."
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Source: Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
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