Inside a Third-Generation Oysterman’s Tough Trade
April 10, 2015 - It doesn't take a scientist to understand nature and the human effects on oysters in Apalachicola Bay, Florida. Kendall Schoelles's ancestors harvested oysters here in the late 1800s. An oysterman himself, he knows what affects the mollusks. The 2010
Deepwater Horizon oil spill near Louisiana had an impact on the oysters here, even though the oil didn't reach this part of Florida.
This video was collected during the 2015
Florida Wildlife Corridor Expedition, a thousand-mile journey from central Florida to Alabama to help protect the corridor "for the health of people, wildlife, and watersheds."
More videos from the Florida Wildlife Corridor Expedition:
Florida's Beautiful but Inhospitable SpringsFrog-Licking and Other Florida Wonders
Kendall Schoelles
Oysterman
[00:04] Tongs are just like two big rakes put together, try to rake the oysters up in the middle and bring them up and put them on the cull board.
[00:18] Then I cull them off, see how many it turns out.
My family's been here all their lives, my granddad built this lease here, got a grant from the state to build it to help out oystering, and that was in the late 1800s. My family's been working in the oyster business one way or another ever since. And I hope I can do it until I can't do it anymore.
[00:45] It takes four months before an oyster can reproduce. If you take all the big purddy (sic) oysters and not leave some to put good spat out, you're not going to have a good crop.
We had going on 3 years of drought and it was in bad shape enough, and then the oil spill and everybody got scared. From what I saw, I didn't see no oil come into Apalachicola Bay, but everybody thought it was coming here. So they just pretty much took everything thinking the oil was going to kill it all, but they didn't realize if it didn't come in here and kill it all then you'd have nothing. And that's one of the reasons why it's in such bad shape.
You have good years and bad years like in anything, it has a lot to do with nature and everything has to be right for them to spawn good and oysters are funny, they have to have that right mixture of fresh and salt water. Too much salt water and they die and too much fresh water and they die.
The drought affects the oysters in the way where they're not getting the right mix of salt and fresh water and therefore they can't grow as good, they can't spawn and put the spat out and have little oysters come back.
Mother nature can take care of itself so much but she does need help every now and then.
