Where I live, Cotuit, Massachusetts, was once one of the premier brand names in gourmand circles due to the superiority of the oysters harvested from Cotuit Bay.
The Cotuit Oyster Company, founded in 1857, is still going strong from its shed near Little River, farming oysters over more than 37 acres of grants out in the bay. The Company, arguably the oldest continuous commercial enterprise in the village, has had some hard times over the last 50 years, most, in my opinion, brought on by the decline in water quality brought on by the World War II landing craft that trained here in the 40s to prepare for D-Day out of Camp Can-Do-It; the nitrogen loading of shoreline septic systems, lawn fertilizer and dog poop; and toxic run-off from storm sewers, automobile oil, and other junk.
In 1857, Capt. William Childs returned from a life at sea to the life of an oysterman. His business became one of the biggest on Cape Cod. Oysters then were packed into barrels and carts and transported across the Cape in large wagons to the railroad depot in West Barnstable. From there, they were shipped by rail to Boston, New York and other cities in the northeast.
By 1870, six other oyster companies worked the bottom of Cotuit Bay. In 1894, Childs’ son Samuel decided to go into the business himself. He established his shanty at the present location of the Cotuit Oyster Company.
In 1912, Harry Height, an executive at the Eastman Kodak CO. bought out most of the independent oysterman and formed the Cotuit Oyster Company. In 1923, he sold his right to the Seacoast Oyster Company of New Haven, Conn.
The industry thrived until WWII, when the Army erected Camp Can Do-It above the narrows in North Bay. Landing Craft training for the invasion of France caused havoc with the delicate oyster beds, churning up the bottom and fouling the water with silt. This and the hurricane of 1944 proved disastrous to the industry.
The Seacoast Oyster Company rebuilt their shanties and had the beds producing again by 1955. In 1960, the company turned over the grants to their manager Andy Post. Three Cotuit residents bought the company and incorporated it, renting the property and the name along with the trademark: Cotuits-R-Superior, from the Seacoast Oyster Company. Andy Post operated the business up until 1973 when Mr. Nelson expressed interest in buying the company.
When I was a kid the harbor was still pretty pristine and the bottom was covered with eel grass (zostera marina L.), a crucial habitat for baby clams (known as spat), scallops, and a healthy benthic ecosystem. The eel grass disappeared over the 1970s — as it did across Cape Cod — for a variety of reasons, including a suspected blights, and the bottom has steadily degraded into a mucky mess of algae mats, inedible spider crabs, and a complete loss of the healthy marine life I knew as a kid. There is an excellent page on eelgrass, the factors that contribute to its cycles, and the threats to its survival here.
Underneath it all, still thrives the clams. Specifically the quahog and the steamer. Oysters, wild ones not caged in the Oyster Company’s pens, are rare but findable if one knows where to look.
The story of Waquoit Bay, to the west of Cotuit, is interesting in that the bay also lost most of its eelgrass over the last 50 years, saw a total collapse of its scallop fishery, and has been the object of an intense ecological survey which resulted in the area being designation a National Marine Estuary project.
The single most important action that the government could take to restore coastal water quality, in my uninformed opinion, would be to build a comprehensive wastewater treatment facility and get every home within a mile of the water off of in-ground septic systems and into a true sewer system. That single action would take away the nitrogen loading that is spawning algae blooms which in turn block sunlight from reaching the bottom where the eel grass grows. It won’t be enough though. Motorboats stir up a lot of sediment and have exploded in numbers the past twenty years as the Cape has become saturated with second homes, moorings and docks.
Anyway, I have a 5 gallon bucket filled with steamers on the deck, ready for shucking and deep frying into fried clams tonight.
Not a very positive article… If your from the village, you should be promoting ways to protect and preserve Cotuit Bay. Not bash it along with the people who make a living from it.
Bash it? Are you out of your mind? You should be congratulating me for giving a damn about the quality of the water where your livelihood grows, not slagging me for pointing out that the past thirty years of development have utterly trashed one of the most beautiful bodies of water on the planet. From the village? Do your homework.
And no, it is isn’t a positive article. Because I don’t feel very positive about the direction things are going. And I not once bashed the “people who make a living from it.”
When Cotuit Oyster Company said, “you should be promoting ways to protect…Cotuit Bay,” he meant BESIDES your advococy of a “comprehensive wasterwater treatment facility.” I mean, c’mon, you obviously don’t care about the bay if ALL you want is an expensive wastewater treatment center, Cotuit streets torn up to put in sewage mains, and the increase in taxes that go along with it. You pansy, David.
What Cotuit Oyster Company meant was, “you should be promoting people buy our farmed oysters rather than bitch that you can’t find the wild suckers anymore and your solution of a wastewater facility doesn’t help us sell more oysters so what kind of moron are you.”
Of course, I was reading between the lines on that one and perhaps Dick Nelson or Chris Gargiulo can read your post a little more carefully and elaborate more clearly before putting the company name on an ill-informed, poorly written response.
i have been in cotuit on and off since 1939 and i can say that, while there may not be as many oysters now as there were in the 50 s, chris gargiulo is to be congratulated for bringing the cotuit oyster back from the dead. i truly hopes he keeps up the great work.
1/7/09
Yeah, I’m glad Chris has kept the place open. Dick Nelson also did a great job keeping the Oyster Company running through some tough times. Now let’s get a sewer system for the Three-Bays area and bring back the scallops and eel-grass.
Waquoit / Cotuit Oysters (grown in racks) are amongst the best oysters on Cape Cod. Everyone should know that – and everyone should eat lots of oysters. Cotuit, Wellfleet, Dennis, Barnstable, Brewster etc.
Everyone should also not eat raw oysters from the wild if there is any chance of any fecal matter in the water as you’ll get sick from e-coli (most of the time) and anyone who is immune compromised might have a really hard time with it.
It is well known that oysters filter out excess nitrogen from water. It is well known that oysters are considered an actual remediation effort – which I believe works. At least in a simplistic sense.
Yet, for concerned Cape citizens who wish to “clean up” the water, I do believe they are bringing a toothpick to a gunfight. To make a dent, I think you would need hundreds of millions of oysters grown and removed (for sale every) year. And yet, if those oysters get somehow turned back into nitrogen and phosphorus, you’re going to need a whole lot more oysters – and lots of trucks to send them far inland.
LOVE YOUR WRITING MR CHURBUCK!!
Thank you.