Way back when when I was young and in my prime our beaches were FULL to brimming with huge Oysters. Oyster stew was a regular meal and the half dozen oysters for it could be collected in a few minutes. Then Canada brought in lots of Asian refugees who immediately de-nuded aka raped our beaches taking any and all crabs, clams and oysters (anything they could pick up) by the bucket full until they almost went extinct. For years any harvesting then became prohibitive and it has only been recently that select small beaches have opened.
Commercial oyster farming has been on-going.
I can remember collecting up some oysters, putting them in buckets with oatmeal 'til they spit out the grit (clams too) and then shucking them and finding mega pearls.
This is from our Island News:
Pearl-filled oyster surprises Vancouver Island dinner party guests
Oyster, harvested in Courtenay, contained almost 50 pearls of varying sizes
A pearl-filled oyster had a Saanich man fearing for his own pearly whites after he bit into the fresh-caught mollusc at a friend’s house on Saturday night.
Eric Bourquin said his friend trapped the oysters in a “secret spot” near Courtenay, not long before their evening dinner in Saanichton. The oysters were dipped in flour and pan-fried for appetizers while the friends drank a few beers before dinner.
But after one bite, Bourquin knew he had not been given an ordinary oyster.
“It was like biting into a bunch of rocks,” he said. “I almost chipped my teeth.”
Bourquin spit out the pearls in his mouth and started looking through the rest of the oyster. Sure enough, there were dozens more.
Bourquin said he and his wife both grew up in Victoria, often eating fresh local seafood, but neither had ever bitten into a pearl-filled oyster.
“We couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I’ve never experienced anything like that.”
The oyster itself was small – barely three inches long – but somehow contained almost 50 pearls of varying sizes. One resembles a molar tooth and some are only one or two millimetres in size.
Bourquin says the misshapen pearls are likely not worth much and he’s given them to his wife and the oystercatcher to make pendants or earrings. Still, biting into dinner and finding secret treasure has left the couple happy as a clam.
Pearls
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Re: Pearls
@Horus That is exactly what I thought too! They only grow pearls in response to some irritation, piece of sand etc. Nobody mentioning (thankfully) the "suffering" the oyster when through to make these pearls
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