Cold weather has kept oystermen in the house instead of on the bay battling the elements. Many tongers haven't been able to last a full day on the water. They have been forced to come back with only half of the amount of oysters they usually sell to their customers.
This year the oyster harvest in Northwest Florida is at a dismal low compared to those of other years. The cold weather has made it difficult for tongers to stay out on the water long enough to get in a good day's work. Tonging is the traditional way to harvest bay area oysters.
Apalachicola Bay Oysters are a rare delicacy. For years, in all kinds of weather, you could look over the bay and see dozens of guys with what looked a little like post hole diggers, pulling oysters out of the water.
Consider the high winds we've had and imagine that you are in a small wooden skiff bouncing up and down on the waves. You thrust the oyster tongs into the roiling water as high winds toss ocean spray into your face. Even during the calmest of days this is a tough job.
With temperatures closing in on the freezing mark and gusts of wind threaten to blow you across the bay to St. George Island, this work is definitely not something for the weak of back and faint of heart. Most of the tongers haven't been able to last a full day on the water. They have been forced to come back with only half of the amount of oysters they usually sell to their customers.
The oystermen of Apalachicola use hand tongs. These can be up to 20' long and shaped somewhat like a pair of scirrors with a rake-like basket attached to the bottom of each pole. Midway down the length of the poles is a pin that gives them their scissor like appearance. Lowering this apparatus into the water, they close the tongs and pick up the oysters they have captured between the rakes.
This is assuming that they were hovering over a spot that held clumps of mature oysters. Oyster beds are everywhere in the Apalachicola bay, so for tongers who have been doing this most of their lives, it's a simple practice to find enough for a good days's work.
After picking the oysters up off the bottom of the bay and brought up to the surface, they're then laid on the culling board. This is usually just a piece of plywood laid across the bow of the boat with a length of 2 x 4 nailed to the each side to keep the mollusks from rolling off the board.
From the culling board the oysters are graded and anything under three inches must be thrown back into the by. Oysters grow in clumps and the oystermen separate them with a culling hammer by knocking them away from each other. Try doing this with temperatures approach freezing.
This is the way oystermen harvest the oysters on the bay. In some areas of the country gasoline powered rakes drag the bottom of the river or whichever bay they're in, destroying the beds as they move along. I don't believe this sign of progress has come to Apalachicola and I hope it doesn't.
There's something almost dreamy about eating oysters and imagining you're out there on the water with tongs in your hands, scraping the bottom to see if you can feel shells. Picture yourself in one of those wooden skiffs that make up most of the fleet of oyster boats on the bay and you can begin to appreciate the amount of back breaking work that goes into providing oysters for us all.
