 Here's great. Oh, yes, that would help and thank you for the nice introduction Just to prelude if you get bored of my talking anytime. There's free oysters right over there. I promise you'll get them eventually And we'll circulate them as well So yes by valve curious, I'm certainly that and I hope some of you are as well I guess the biggest thing is is like why Why am I interested or is that how I how I got interested in oysters. I'm not a marine biologist or anything I'm just I studied Latin American history in college But I worked at a fish market when I was younger And you know, we sold salmon we sold swordfish you sold everything But I this one particular customer who'd always come in and really ask about oysters like oh Can you get this variety? Can you get this variety or how is this one growing or where's it from? And I think who here likes wine tasting. I Hope it's unanimous, right? Oysters the exact same thing, you know You have one grape and it's grown in different areas in different styles and you get a completely different product Well, oysters are very much so the same way You have two primary species the first being the Pacific oyster or crass Australia gaius Which is probably 90% of the oysters you eat around this area It was imported from Japan back in the early 1900s and now it's pretty much the West Coast standard for what we eat Then you have the crass Australia virginica, which is the Atlantic oyster. It's actually the only oyster That's legally grown on the East Coast. You can't have any imported species and it's the native species that area Then we have three kind of sub oysters and these are not the only species of oysters in the world Obviously, but these are the five species that we consume in the US And I lost them somehow but There we go Then you have a crass Australia second sick of mea Which is many of you may know as Kumamoto. Is anyone familiar with Kumamoto's? Yeah, everyone loves him everyone loves him, you know So that is its own unique species also native Japan imported to the Pacific coast Then you have Australia edgeless This is the Balon oyster the European flat oyster anytime you hear about French famous oysters, this is that oyster Really really unique oyster. We can get them in the United States not legally imported, but they grow fairly in Maine And then finally probably my favorite is the actual native Pacific oyster Australia concafila or the Olympia oyster, which would you know get in too much further and further into the speech So, let's just tackle it right on everyone wants to know about it, right? Ours is aphrodisiacs So is it true? Is it myth? What is it? Well? Aphrodite the Greek goddess was said to have been born from the sea in some sort of malice shell scallop shell oyster shell can be debated But the the Greek goddess of lust love beauty born from the sea in an oyster in my opinion I'd like to think so right so there's certainly some history there Next Casanova lay off me Rick Casanova was famed for having eaten 50 oysters every morning for breakfast And he attributed his vivacity or vivacity to having eaten those oysters Also the very famous Roman physician Galen would prescribe oysters for any sort of sexual out ailment Napoleon used to eat a dozen oysters before going into battle and then all the way up to modern days I mean go and see a Valentine's menu without an oyster in San Francisco. I dare you So, I mean, it's pretty it's pretty well known if someone says name of food that is an aphrodisiac it's typically an oyster and marketers know this as well At least those who are growing and selling the oysters you got naked boy naked Roy's Beach You got the French kiss oyster from New Brunswick. You got Fanny Bay. I know I got one Britain the crowd So Fanny's little something British Say he knows and I swear to God, there's a naked cowboy oyster that actually is trademarked with the naked cowboy from New York I Was I was actually in New York a couple weeks ago kayaking amongst the wild beds of naked cowboy oysters So What's the actual truth of this? I mean The biggest thing is that there's two things Historically any food product that has given the majority of its body mass To reproduction has been considered a some sort of aphrodisiac. So you look at figs You know majority of their body masses is promoted to reproduction same thing with pomegranates Majority of their body mass for reproduction actually good good quantity Also oysters when they spawn about 60 to 70 percent of their body turns into sperm or or egg when they reproduce Additionally anything that Bear with me here Anything that resembles male or female genitalia has also been considered of some sort of Aphrodisiac so I set this up on my 12-inch MacBook. It looks fine there, but Here it is There there's a pretty undeniable resemblance here now I'm not gonna keep it up there for too long. Don't worry but anything that looks like You know some some has some sort of vulvic or label characteristic has been considered of aphrodisiac and just to be fair To everyone, you know, we'll throw that out there as well so historically These items have been considered aphrodisiacs Now what's what's kind of the science to it? There's a couple things one oysters are the the largest or the most Abundant source of zinc that naturally occurs the second being liver So if you consider an aphrodisiac oysters liver, I'd probably go with oysters, you know Zinc is actually shown to produce well lack of zinc is said to produce impudence in men and and actual Good good levels of zinc in one's diet is you know supposed to increase sperm count increase testosterone production such on Second there was a study by George Fisher Professor a professor of chemistry at Berry University of Miami He did a study in spawning oysters or spawning shellfish for that matter that found that it had Deaspartic acid and amino acid that he then injected into rats and was shown to increase sexual hormone levels So there is actual contemporary physical evidence showing that oysters and shellfish are aphrodisiacs and Then in general oysters are just really healthy food and I think when anyone else Eats healthy foods. They feel better. They feel sexier. They've you know, you feel good. You want to kind of get lucky So I mean I got I got a whole list of things that like oysters are just five oysters provide your daily levels of iron copper zinc manganese abundant in vitamin a vitamin C vitamin D I'm sorry No manganese. He's foreign. He's circus. It's okay And vitamin B my favorite one of the reasons for hangovers is vitamin D B deficiency So my my job is an oyster sucker. I can have a rough night go in and eat a dozen oysters feeling great, you know So that's another great thing about them So in conclusion before we move on to pearls, I guess the thing about aphrodisiacs is however you want to look at it There's a certain romanticization about it. You feel good. There's certainly scientific evidence. There's historical evidence Go out have two dozen oysters. Go have fun. That's my opinion Yeah pearls Hasn't us a oyster sucker I can't tell you how many times I've gotten this question, you know, like hey, buddy You know, he's like with his other friends or with a girl. He's like finding any pearls today And I'm like, oh, no, unfortunately not sir But if I had a nickel for every time I've heard that fucking question, you know, I could actually buy a real pearl I think But you need to understand like eating a dozen oysters won't actually get you a pearl There are two separate families for that matter taxonomical families. The pearl oyster is territa Which is mostly a southeastern species species of oyster that produces those nice Elizabethan pearls that we want And then if you look at this guy, this is a true oyster the oysters we consume and you can see a little oyster forming right up Here they're mostly just nasty little garbanzo bean rabbit toe looking things like all malice produced them But not to the desired effect that we want and Moving on as anyone familiar with the only eat oysters in months that have ours So there's a lot of a lot of evidence for this going back to even even pre-colonial times They think Native Americans actually had some sort of knowledge of this and there are real reasons for it But the first actually recorded evidence of it is William Butler Who was a physician to King James the first of England and he said it is Unseasonable and unwholesome in all months that have not an R in their name to eat noiseter I wish we spoke like that You know, it just sounds so much better. So that's the first evidence of it. Actually we have recorded And it moves all the way up into in the modern-day culture I found this it was from a funny book number six from 1943 and this shows how prevalent it is or at least it was in the 1940s they made a comic book about it auto the outcast oyster who was born with the the Unfortunate birthmark of an R on his head and no one to hang out with them because they thought they'd get eaten So it's a really culturally systemic belief and there are some reasons for it. So kind of what are they? one Oysters both hibernate and spawn in different times of the year depending on water temperature In the summer and I mean in the winter and oyster will really be fat They build up these glycogen reserves because they shut down for the really cold months And they try to build up these reserves so they can essentially hibernate not open and not feed These are the months of December January So when you eat an oyster in December or January It's gonna be really fat really juicy all these rich sugars in it You know and then in the summer if anyone's had a really spawning oyster like this guy right here It's just kind of a creamy nasty milky bomb that you don't really want to eat I know we're in August. I know we're in August. Trust me. I have some very good oysters But people have moved around this what they have done is they've created a triploid oyster Which is an oyster that has three chromosomes and it's non-gendered so it never breeds so you never get this nasty spawning mess So and don't worry about triploid oysters It's not like people are genetically engineering things out of crazy a lot of the lot of the items that you do eat are triploids like tomatoes You know all sorts of fruits and veg are triploids. So it's not crazy GMO Monsanto shit second when When waters get warmer they generally breed more bad bacteria And this is I have an oyster vendor his name is Lou and when times are tough He's like man, everything is closing down. You better serve a penicillin minionette, you know But in warmer waters they do breed more dangerous bacteria So but however, there is federal regulation and very close monitoring of these grounds I mean you're honestly more at risk eating some tainted spinach from certain areas of the world or or you know Peanut butter I've there are more cases of peanut butter sickness and spinach sickness than there actually are recorded oyster illnesses And then the biggest one is not the biggest one, but when I was working the fish market I swear I got as soon as October hit We get all these adorable little grandmothers coming in buying all these oysters in high volume Because after a long and bivalve bereft summer they could finally eat oysters again And this goes all the way back to the 1800s the 1900s when there was no reliable Refrigerated shipping. I mean you look at this oyster stall up here. That's an image of an oyster stall like 1850s 1860s New York I guarantee you that wasn't hygienic or well iced down like our oysters over here And this is actually a contemporary picture from France Taking about you know nine months ago from a friend of mine who lives up in Vermont He took a trip to France and they don't apparently ice their oysters either But anyway on a warm summer, you know day you wouldn't catch me eating an oyster in 1850s New York or modern-day France So it does have certain truth to it But so long as you're eating oysters that are reputable establishment or you at least know what you're doing You can certainly enjoy oysters year-round Continuing on the refrigeration and and kind of moving into a little bit of the history of oysters Oysters of mankind have not only Have been intertwined for a long time mostly to the oysters detriment Pre-columbian societies down in the Andes used to use Spondylists or pearl oysters as currency they used their shells as the closest form of currency they had some people will say that You know inking culture was not actually a Capitalist society, but it's not for this conversation But they did use them as close close to a form of currency All over North America you find these shell bins. I'm sure some of you are familiar with the Emoryville shell men And actually that the Chesapeake is an Algonquin word for a great shellfish. So a lot of Native American cultures Fully depended on oysters as a main stable protein Another thing is the Greeks use them as use oyster shells as ballots in their voting Whenever they're casting votes, they would use oysters and if you put an oyster shell down in men Yes, if you are a vote for yes or oyster shell up and then a vote for no early American colonists even used oyster shell to build a lot of Streets and everything and and buildings and edifices to to you know, establish towns and colonies Ourses didn't really take off and this is all gonna be very brief because I didn't have much time to delve into the history But oysters really took off in New York around the 1820s 1830s It was when the when the Dutch actually arrived it was estimated that 50% of the world's oyster population was in New York Harbor and they quickly started to wipe that out but You know back back in the in the 19th century people thought that oysters in New York were pretty much synonymous And they were you could either make a living go off oysters go to any one of these, you know little oyster sellers buy oysters Rich people poor people everyone ate oysters is very popular and I think my favorite story about New York and oysters is Back to the aphrodisiac thing Oysters sellers in 19th century New York and brothels were pretty much one in the same It makes sense, right? Yeah, and these sellers would denote their sale of oysters and Ladies I guess you would say with the red with a red balloon With a candle inside of it. That's how they would they would note an oyster seller and some people believe the first actual recorded use of the term red light district is in the 1894 Sandusky Register These red light balloons were happening back in the 1850s 1860s So some people do believe that the term red light district comes from Oyster sellers in 1850s 1860s New York kind of an interesting little tidbit there Moving on is anyone familiar with the term blue point Anyone heard of blue point oysters? Yeah, so probably the most abused appellation of oysters The funny thing about oysters is that they don't have any product designation of origin like you can call an oyster Whatever the hell you want, you know Whereas something like champagne or or vedalia onions or tequila they have legal definitions Whereas the blue point oyster does not or at least did not until this is an actual genuine blue point oyster And the cool thing about the blue point oyster is is that it was such a popular oyster that the name was coined by Joseph Avery in in I think around 1819 and It became so popular that you've started finding New Jersey blue points You started finding Louisiana blue points Virginia blue points, but there is an actual true blue point and in 1909 1908 excuse me There was an actual product designation of origin Law passed within you know, New York however, but it's not recognized whatsoever and anyone call a blue point a blue point But there is an actual genuine blue point from the Great South Bay of New York that you can try we have them at our restaurant I suggest you come in and try them very very great oyster Next moving west to San Francisco The Bay areas has a very rich half-shell history if you will This is a picture of the actual Embryville shell midden before it became a fucking gap Yeah, so it did exist it did exist So we talked about shell mans that was a real thing But when the 49ers showed up Oysters were very popular very abundant people sailing into new or into San Francisco Bay or estuary more accurately The ships would actually go ashore on oyster reefs. They were so abundant and This was actually the native oyster The Olympia oyster we talked about beforehand and Mark Twain was such a big fan of them He said that the Oxidon a hotel Which is I believe on Montgomery or no, Sansa and Bush in San Francisco somewhere around that area. It's no longer there. He said that this place was heaven on a half-shell and Other interesting note. This is actually where they claim the martini was invented. So oysters martinis I'm sure good old Mark had a had a good time there Sam. Whatever you want to call him, you know so San Francisco was a very very prevalent oyster area and The native oyster the Olympia was quickly overfished. They even started importing Pacific or eastern oysters to start growing them, but I think all this history we've gone forever I think the most interesting story is that of Placerville. Does anyone know where Placerville is? Yeah, that's about a hundred miles north east northeast of here It used to be called hang town and this is a picture of where it is and Historic Placerville or hang town is on the left Now hang town was an old-school mining town right around the 49er era And it was named hang town because with all these new rich people coming in Obviously, there were seedy characters flowing in trying to relieve them of this newly found wealth So there's two stories one the hang town fry Before I get into the stories the hang town fries and omelette is anyone familiar with this hang down fry It's an omelette with bacon oysters spinach and eggs omelette Obviously, so it's a very popular traditional California cuisine and there's a couple stories behind it was created the first being that Man had just hit pay dirt got a bunch of gold walked into El Dorado hotel in hang town and asked for the most expensive Meal and he said I've got oysters eggs and bacon very expensive items eggs need to be carted in very carefully to this mining town bacon had to be shipped from the east coast and Oysters need to be shipped from the coast hundred miles inland The story I like which is most likely apocryphal But still really cool is that this guy was on death row and For his last request for a meal. He said I want to oysters eggs and bacon Knowing full-fledgedly that they all needed to be shipped into town perhaps delaying his execution By quite a few days pretty clever in my opinion, you know, who knows if it's true That's my little version of the hang-town fry. I had a lot of fun making that And my buddy who's shucking oysters. He's the photographer Yeah so anyway very very rich and abundant half-shell history in in San Francisco and it slowly started to clap to collapse, you know they we had all these oysters and What really happened? I mean You saw around the 1920s, you know, San Francisco Bay was closed You can't harvest live shellfish from San Francisco Bay We all see this beautiful bay and it's a shell no pun intended of what it once was, you know It's cloudy. It's disgusting as gross. So what really happened one was hydraulic mining You know with all the gold rush everything they started blasting away this this huge amounts of earth that would all be flowing down Into our watershed eventually into San Francisco Bay causing huge silt build-ups and covering oyster oyster beds To overfishing and dredging, you know Look at the best analogy I can think of is Imagine someone taking a 200-foot bulldozer, you know and just going over the rainforest that literally does happen But that's essentially what oyster dredging would do to the bay, you know back in the day Just literally destroying entire ecosystems and then obviously pollution Oysters can only fight it for so long This is a graph demonstrating the decrease of oyster landings in the Chesapeake From 1880 all the way to 2008. I mean, it's pretty incredible You know, they were they were landing 120,000 pounds of oysters all over the 2005 where maybe it's 500, you know, we've modern-day oysters are functionally extinct I'm sorry Landing that's how much they harvest when you take a harvest in and you land it at an actual physical port. That's how they quantify it So yeah, that's I mean, it's pretty incredible how How drastically it decreased over less than a hundred a little over a hundred years, you know, there's really no Not any wild oysters left. So how do I have a job? Like how do I still shock oysters? I guess well 95% of the oysters we eat nowadays are farmed and This is an oyster larvae They're grown in hatcheries primarily at least within North America And the cool thing about these is one million of these little guys can fit right on your fingernail They're super tiny. What they do is they they throw them in these These hatchery systems in which they adhere to pulverized oyster shell and they start growing in a little baby seed oysters And once they get of age, you know, maybe within I don't know anywhere from six weeks to 12 weeks They throw them in a bag and there are multiple ways of farming oysters But this is pretty much what happens in Tamales Bay They throw in a bag and then they throw them on these racks And they just let them sit there, you know, obviously they monitor water quality But it's a pretty low maintenance job If you just want a basic, you know, Pacific oyster and the end product is hopefully this and The coolest thing about oysters I feel is That they're really really low impacts Farmed Protein, you know, I kind of extrapolated this graph from a number of things But you have beef chicken and farmed salmon And you have the feed conversion ratio per pound So for every one pound of beef you need to put seven pounds of feed into that animal just to get one pound That means grain corn whatever grass whatever it be Chickens about two to one salmon is pretty good at one to one, but oysters don't even matter We don't put any feed into them. They just sit there and filter water, you know, it's it's completely We don't add anything to them. You know Same thing with fresh water usage usage. I took this from a number of studies Primarily a guy at the University of Twente in the Netherlands in which he had three different categories of water footprints One was green water usage. One was blue water usage was gray I just took the green which was the actual water or which was the amount of water That needed to go into growing crops to feed animals and to the blue which was the actual consumption of water The gray was the pollution that would go into actually harvesting the animals So I excluded that from oysters because there obviously is a little impact there but I mean To get a pound of beef you have to use 2,500 gallons of fresh water chickens 700 farm salmon 22 oyster nothing No, that's the citation of where I got it Yeah, I didn't even realize that That'd be a lot more actually in there But as a citation so basically the point is oysters are very very low impact protein and my point is eat more oysters You know with all these population boom I've been reading that Dan Brown book in Ferno. Sorry, I apologize, but is anyone reading that you guys are all smart So you probably don't But it's talking about all this population boom and like scarcity of fresh water and everything and so Hopefully we can do the best we can but actually my friend had a very good line about Dan Brown books He said it's like McDonald's, you know You eat it really fast and you think it's really good, but once you finish it You're like I say a bunch of shit man And I kind of I agree with that actually, but I like them. So leave me alone and Then the biggest thing that I really wanted to convey about oysters is what? They're their environmental impacts I mean oysters are really the coral reefs the the mangroves of the temper zone where we live and they're pretty much gone You know Oysters take all this nitrogen out of the water all this wastewater that we pump into our watershed is Removed by oysters or potentially could be removed by oysters. They take an algae They take in phytoplankton all these things that breed on nitrogen and they they remove that from the water Filter it through as bio deposits Which is an example here and then convert it into organic nitrogen as their bio deposit And all this improves water clarity improves oxygen in the water, which you know This trickles up or trickles down to all sorts of plant life all sorts of crabs Salmon, I mean oyster reefs really are the coral reefs of Tempered zones they just are the areas where life is and we pretty much have none That's why the Bay looks like shit You know This is just a brief for the sake of time. I'll kind of skip over this but this is just like brief scale of a brief example of the Ecosystems stressors to oysters and and the benefits provided by them But moving on so these are examples of and Chris limb this gentleman right here Where's my pointer? Right there. He's in theater too if you want to talk to him But this is an example of all the modern-day oyster restoration projects that are going on to really rebuild our oceans because I mean What happens the oceans happens to us? So it's a very vital thing. This is an example of in New York Where they're they're just dumping oyster shell all throughout New York Harbor. This is an example down here on the left In the Chesapeake where they're planting a oyster reef in which oyster shells will hopefully naturally adhere to and create natural oyster reefs and then this is Chris limb measuring What sort of oyster existence or what actual biota is within a certain area of point penile just north of Richmond? So There is evidence that that oyster restoration can work. This is Blaine, Washington, which is right on the Waterfront of Drayton Harbor and Wild or wild shellfish harvesting was closed there in 1996 And the citizens of Blaine said we need to kind of do something about this So in 2001 they started the Drayton Harbor community oyster farm in which they were trying to rebuild the water quality of the area and sure enough with efforts on land to reduce pollution and With a thriving oyster population They were able to feasibly harvest shellfish in 2005 four years after they started it So there is evidence that this can work. You can bring back watersheds. You can bring back life to these dead harbors to these dead bays Obviously, this is a microcosm. This isn't a solution for San Francisco Bay immediately, but it is evidence that it works There we go So that brings us back to our local Bay Area one my buddy Chris who's in the other room He works for the watershed project and approach in a program called the living shoreline I got to join him at a field trip to Point Panol Up just north of Richmond and this is the these are the oyster grounds at low tide And this is an example of a living Olympia native oyster that I pulled out of the water Optimistically, hopefully within the next few months. They'll be spreading out about a hundred of these oyster balls All around this area and the idea is that all these native oysters will start adhering to this ball and creating natural reefs So eventually it may just look like this You know bring the bay back to what it once was because a healthy watershed Healthy bays equal healthy humanity and a healthy ecosystem in general So yeah, that that about sums it up I hope all of you take a little interest in your local watersheds and your local oyster populations and Try to strive for this eat some oysters That's the Chesapeake Yeah, that's a region of the Chesapeake But optimistically it could be us within 20 30 years. We'll see So yeah, thank you very much everyone Hopefully That's the last oyster Did everyone get one? Oh, I didn't even notice all right. I'm gonna eat one then joy So yeah, if anyone has any questions Given my presentation, you obviously know where I stand on Drake's Bay So if you want to address that we can certainly talk in private, but I'm sure that's a whole conversation We could have anyone else Mercury okay, so he's asking if I have a worry about build up prescription drugs I've never heard that one before but mercury is a big thing mercury's existent in all seafood and Usually it's just the longevity that or the length of time that any Species lives in the water its mercury level is gonna, you know increase and increase a big example is orange ruffy As I heard orange ruffy a fish from like New Zealand that fish is about a hundred and forty years old Has some of the highest mercury levels of any fish that we eat So it's just the longer a species is in the water the more mercury it has swordfish is also another big concern Some tuna the larger tuna are a big concern as well, but oysters We harvest them typically within 18 months to maybe at best six seven years So they really do not have high mercury levels whatsoever That's that's a big thing that people are currently studying I think that being oysters are cluster species they like to adhere to other oysters or other oyster shells So that's been the most successful thing. That's why when in hatcheries they actually pulverize these shells down to you know Greens of pepper and then oysters will adhere to those They've tried some other things like you know natural ceramics and stuff like that But still a natural oyster shell is the best thing that they've found biologically I don't know why they go to it, but I don't know for me. It makes sense, you know like begets like something like that, you know I got being pointed at the balcony by this gentleman. Oh, this is a Marin Miyagi From Tamales Bay. It's growing the rack and bag style that we saw It's probably about 18 18 months old I'd say and the biggest thing I didn't put out any lemon or lime or hot sauce because like I said oysters like wine They taste very different. So it's just tasting this oyster naked or in its purest form You really get those flavors of like, you know super briny and then kind of bitter herb You know kind of lettuce type thing going on, which is very unique to Tamales Bay I feel at least culinarily speaking Back right. I'm not going through the whole thing, man Can I explain the Drake's Bay situation? I'll let you know where it currently is Basically this decision by Ken Salazar and the Department of the Interior was to close Drake's Bay And of course no matter which way the decision went it was going to be appealed The Lonnie family and the Drake's Bay company have appealed They're currently in the 9th Circuit Court appellate process in San Francisco and the decision whether to continue the farms operation and renew their lease or Honor Ken Salazar's decision to close it is in the hands of three people three judges. So that's pretty much where it stands you know, we can talk about specifics of why and and You know, that's something we should definitely talk about one-on-one because I could go on forever You know one more It's gentlemen right here So that's an interesting you will the five primary species of voices that I have up There's two different ones. There's crass Australia the genus crass Australia and the genus Australia Crass Australia will generally start out male or female and then make an alteration at one point in their life And that's what they'll be for the rest of their life The Australia family flips around more frequently and they can go from male female male female Usually about up to the age of three when they definitively decide what they are and the cool thing about the reproduction between them Yeah, they're you know, they like to play around. What can you say? The cool thing about them is is one that or at least in my opinion Crass Australia the the male actually releases sperm and the female releases her eggs and they mesh in the water They meet up in the water and create the larvae in free water Whereas the Australia the and this is a reason why native oysters Olympia oysters died so quickly because the the female actually takes the for the Olympia oyster and the European oyster the female actually takes in the sperm and Harvest and grows the eggs within the actual you know within her oyster them and then Spit some back out So that's that's the reason why it's it would happen there They're reproductions so much more fickle and they're there's so much harder to reproduce You know, but yeah, they do change sex a lot so Yeah, you eat males and you eat females I've heard that people really good people can actually tell the species of an or the gender of an oyster by looking at shell I'm not quite at that level. I don't see any defining characteristics whatsoever between male or female oyster You know, but majority the ones that we do eat most likely are female. I would say much