(upbeat music) (gentle music) (upbeat music) - So the question what's it like to eat a raw oyster?

(laughing) How do you explain it?

I don't know, it's like jumping in the ocean.

- Kissing a mermaid.

- Kissing a mermaid.

I'm Steve Seymour, and this is my son, Mark.

We're the owners of the Drayton Harbor Oyster Company here in the small town of Blaine, Washington, just south of the Canadian border.

(gentle music) Never expected to be in the food service business.

We were just a couple of fish biologists turned shell fish growers.

We opened a small, little hole in the wall spot next door here.

- Had no idea what we were doing.

We were selling oysters out of an ice cream cooler.

But, being a small community, and us being, you know, engaging with our customers, and getting to know our neighbors, they were the ones that pushed us in a certain direction, which was, can you cook some of these for us?

Can you shuck some of these for us?

That quickly blew up.

This has become an anchor for this community.

So I really look at it, started just to grow oysters and sell them to Seattle.

We quickly evolved into a community hub that is an economical driver for the community.

- We spent a lot of time and energy and passion creating this space.

It literally feels like home.

We should all be here, it's a magic bay.

(lively music) It's about 1,200 acres of tide lands.

Oysters have been grown in this space since the early 1900s.

I got involved in oyster farming out here in the 1980s with a couple of Canadian partners.

- Growing up, you know, my grandpa, my dad, we were always on the water, so the chance to work on the water every day was intriguing.

I think we just jumped in and went for it.

- Then I hired some extra help, Geoff Menzies, who at that time, had moved out from the east coast, and was looking for an opportunity to work in agriculture.

So I hired Geoff and him and I then took this business kind of to the next level, and we ran it as a for profit business for several years, and then the bay water quality deteriorated and the bay got closed.

- That would be have been '96, I think, '94.

- Probably in about the mid-90s, and so it put us out of business.

And so Geoff, when the business got closed, he said I'm gonna stick here and I'm going to get this bay reopened.

And he partnered up with the Puget Sound Restoration Fund, Betsy Peabody, so Jeff and Betsy took the task on to connect with the community, to find out, you know, really to identify what the insults, and it was a combination of a major failing sewer treatment plant, failing septic systems, storm water certainly, and then manure management from the dairy farms that are up in the upper water shed.

(lively music) It really has kept some of this focus on the bay and, again, for our purposes, it's selfish, but we want the community to focus on the bay.

We want them to realize everything they do in the upper water shed ends up in the bay, and effects our ability to keep the bay clean for producing shell fish.

- It used to be dairy farmers and oyster farmers would just, you know, go head to head, but now they're our customers.

They come in and grab a beer, they buy me a beer and want me to sit down with them to chat.

So, that's a really cool piece of this place is that we've created something where now we're able to work as a team versus, you know, as adversaries and being stewards of the land and the bay.

(gentle music) - This has turned out to be maybe one of the more important aspects of what we do here is that opportunity to just keep reminding people that, you know, this oyster is such a precious thing, and it's so unusual, too, to have a bay that's in an urbanizing basin, but still certified for growing shellfish.

In today's world, we ought to be able to live in the water shed without poisoning the water.

(gentle music) - Oyster farming to me is, gosh, working with the environment, working in the mud, using your hands, growing a product that you don't have to feed, you don't have to water.

You have to take care of it, nurture it.

You can grow this gem of a product, you're able to harvest it yourself, bring it, offer it to the community as a protein source, make a buck on it, shuck it open, return it to the water as a shell that's gonna propagate the next generation.

Like it's this perfect circle.

I mean it really is just working with mother nature, and that is incredible.

- We're just so blessed.

I mean, how many other oyster farmers do we know?

You know, of all the things you can do in your lifetime, and to be able to do this, is just amazing.

(gentle music) (upbeat music) - Today I'm up in Drayton Harbor and we're gonna learn how to shuck freshly harvested pacific oysters.

First things first, a shucking knife.

These come in a number of different varieties.

My preferred knife is gonna be a thinner blade, shorter blade, a little bit pointier tip.

You can hurt yourself, so my recommendation is to grab an oyster, grab a pan, grab a rag, and that's to prevent any slippage, and oysters are held together top and bottom by what's called an abductor muscle, and that's gonna always be on the top right-hand side, so about three quarters of the way up, no matter if that shell's up here or up here, it's always gonna be three quarters of the way.

So that's what we're gonna severe to get this thing open.

The preferred method for most folks is gonna be opening from the back, which is called the hinge.

Oyster's going down, my left hand, as I'm right handed, is going very far away, but holding the top of the oyster.

I'm gonna put the knife in the heel of my hand, I'm gonna apply pressure and begin to drill.

That knife goes in fairly easy.

It's about an eighth to a quarter of an inch in.

And now I'm gonna actually pick the oyster up.

So I'm gonna hold it all together to prevent any breakage, and I'm gonna turn it like I was opening a door.

You're gonna hear a pop, and you'll see me kind of pause here.

I'm watching the meat retract, because this animal is alive still.

And I'm gonna work the knife along the top of the shell as if you were fileting a salmon and tracing the backbone.

If you do it right, you're gonna be left with nothing on that upper shell, which is awesome.

So the final move before you're ready to enjoy it, is to grab your knife again and again that little scalloped looking piece is your abductor muscle.

This is kind of like scooping ice cream for me, so I'm gonna follow the shell, give it a little slip that'll release it.

Spin enough around, that oyster's free.

Condiment wise, I prefer accompaniment would be mignonette or mignonette.

I'm gonna throw one back, because they're amazing.

Oh, they're pro tip.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] "Made There," was made possible in part with the support of Visit Bellingham Whatcom County.