CHRIS LUDFORD: Go ahead and pitch it off to the port.

People come to Virginia Beach and come to Virginia for the Oyster Trail, to experience oysters and oyster roasts, oyster festivals.

They drink wine with the oysters.

There's a whole relationship that oysters have with the food and wine and tourism world, and people come to Virginia for our oysters.

What it means to be an oyster farmer is to craft a oyster here on the Lynnhaven that meets the reputation of the river and do it in a way that's sustainable and profitable but is good for the environment.

The Lynnhaven oyster is special and unique because of the balance.

It's salty, but not too salty.

It's got seaweed notes.

It's got a great flavor.

It's not earthy or metallic like other areas.

It's just a sweet, briny oyster.

It's just perfect.

It's a 300 year legend.

Oysters are often looked at as being the seafood mascot of Virginia, because it's just been here forever.

It's been the food of royalty.

It was the food throughout the 17 and 1800s.

It's bucket time.

They ate oysters, you know, with the first colonists to help them get through the winter when it was very difficult.

So it's been a food from day one.

It's also was a food of ancient civilizations.

So it's a food that's been around a long time, and it's had its ups and downs.

And now we're finding out new things about it, and we're bringing it back.

And it's just an exciting food to be around.

For every day that we harvest and sell the oysters, there's three or four days of work where we don't make a dime.

And that is keeping the oysters from being crowded.

So that's what we did today.

We split the oysters in their containers, which were bags in this case.

So for every bag that we cleaned and divided became two bags.

So that's a big growth, you know?

So they need room to grow.

So that's what we did today, what we call maintenance.

I call it maintenance work.

In the oyster industry, they call it husbandry.

Some of the benefits of oyster farming are that we are letting the wild oysters come back.

So we're using farmed oysters to sell and supply the needs of the consumer, but at the same time, that lets the wild oysters rebound and come back 'cause their numbers are lower.

Another benefit of oyster farming is that we filter the water.

The oysters filter the water.

They eat algae, bacteria, and they make it into a protein that is great to eat.

A lot of people ask me, what ways can you eat an oyster?

What ways can they be consumed?

It's limitless.

You got oyster po' boys, fried oyster, oyster chowder, oyster stew, oysters raw on the half shell, roasted oysters, oysters like they do in New Orleans where they melt butter and cheese and reduce it down, barbecue oysters, you name it.