![]() ![]() The tongs are homemade from pine or fir by locals. In Apalachicola, there’s no automated alternative to raking wild beds. Big business never muscled its way into the scene. Oyster tongers work on their own schedule, with no boss, getting paid in cash based on their daily harvest. There’s no shelter from a frigid north wind, or from the summer thunderstorms that have killed people on the water. The oyster tonger cuts an independent, rugged shape atop the bay’s flat horizon. A painted cross and the words “Freedom” decorated the gray hull. She’d sweep the small ones and broken shells back into the bay with a mindless brush of her gloved hand. A few hundred yards away, a man raked while a woman sat beside the broad culling board, tapping oyster clusters with a firm finesse, a pile growing beside her. On one, a guy raked and culled alone, letters spelling “The Goat” affixed to the skiff’s cabin. In the bay, I paddled past low boats anchored in the west end. I’d paddled 500-plus miles on the Chattahoochee and Apalachicola rivers, starting in north Georgia and ending in the Gulf of Mexico at Apalachicola Bay. I first saw the oyster tongers in 2009, from a canoe. ![]() It’s become an almost daily gesture of science, restoration, and hope. Schoelles puts the rake down and grabs a 60-pound sack of spent, sun-cured shells, the insides bleached white, smooth and clean as a dinner plate. They should be buried under a mess of oysters.” “These are probably 50-, maybe 100-year-old oyster shells,” Schoelles says. They look like the scrapings from the bottom of a cereal bag. The rake’s rusted metal teeth emerge from the water and drop a mess of broken shells on the plywood culling board. Although he’s allowed to rake, he won’t reap much of a harvest. Schoelles has a rare private lease on his 100-plus acres of beds. The state has historically regulated the harvests by closing the bay during some summer seasons and mandating a minimum size for the oysters that can be taken. In 2020, the state of Florida, responding to a historic collapse in oyster populations, closed Apalachicola Bay to all wild oyster harvesting for up to five years.Ī severe drought that took place from 1955 to 1957, as well as hurricanes Elena and Kate (1985) and Dennis (2005), and tropical storms Fay (2008) and Debbie (2012), led to oyster declines, but the bay always recovered quickly. This year, though, no one is taking oysters. Schoelles and his oyster tonger peers could clear $200-$300 a day. Oyster shucking houses dotted the shore and the docks in downtown Apalachicola, neighboring Eastpoint, and down the bay to Tommy Ward’s 13 Mile Oyster House. A few local boat makers were building two to three skiffs per month in open-air backyard shops. ![]() The oyster tongers would anchor over their favorite beds and literally rake up the oysters growing on top of the reef - with some rake loads yielding a dozen perfect oysters. ĭecades of accumulated oyster shells made up the beds (or reefs) sitting a few feet below the water’s surface. Back then, over 400 similar skiffs would be spread across the bay - anchored at Cat Point, Indian River Lagoon, Dry Bar, Hagan’s Flats, 11 Mile, and Nick’s Hole. He’s made his living aboard this 22-foot plywood skiff since 1984. Schoelles harvests oysters from beds his grandfather established in the early 1900s, 11 miles west of Apalachicola, Florida. Then, as it drops in the water, the teeth clawing for shells make a muffled crunch. The rake’s handles cut a V against dawn’s cobalt sky. This morning, like most others, he drops his anchor, a rusted engine block, into 5 feet of latte-colored water, grabs a 10-foot-long rake handle made of pine, and steps to the edge of the boat. At 60 years old, Kendall Schoelles, pronounced shell-ess, has never worked a land job. ![]()
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