Virginia’s oyster industry has exploded in recent years thanks in part to environmental cleanup and other supports from the state’s General Assembly, but I had a more important question:
“You’re only supposed to eat oysters in months that end in R, true or false?" I asked Tanner Council with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Oyster Alliance.
"FALSE,” he replied. He said the long running myth about oyster season is a thing of the past.
“These days oysters are good year-round because the vast majority are farm raised oysters that are super healthy, even in the warmest months,” Council explained.
Oyster day is an annual event held to highlight the importance of the bivalve mollusks to the Commonwealth. Newport News Delegate Shelly Simonds is very much a fan; she eats them with a vinegary-Mignonette sauce. And she has a bill to form a wetlands taskforce to find out how to improve oyster breeding grounds.
“How can you have a healthy bay ecology if you don’t have wetlands?” Simonds said with a freshly shucked oyster in each hand.
Simonds also won the annual oyster eating contest by allegedly eating hundreds, though we heard Delegate Mike Webert might have helped.
Another fan of oysters, Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, said it was important for the legislature to help the industry when they can.
“Virginia oysters are shipped all over the country," Surovell said before I pressed a more important question: "What did you put on yours today?"
"I put on some Mignonette, little bit of chipotle tabasco and a little bit of garlic flavored tabasco over there," he said.
And in this humble radio journalist's view, the chipotle sauce was indeed very good.
Simonds’ bill passed the house with 80 votes last week - we’ll see if Surovell's love of oysters extends to wetlands when the bill gets heard in the senate in the coming days.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
