by Mary Reid Barrow
At LRNow’s annual oyster roast May 2, we will toast a great milestone in the comeback back of our famed Lynnhaven oyster.
This spring more than 50 percent of the river–52 percent to be exact–is open for shellfish harvesting. When LRNow began in 2002, only 1 percent of the river was clean enough for oyster harvesting.
The good news reminded me of my long personal connection with the Lynnhaven oyster. Some of you have heard this before but I first met a Lynnhaven oyster on my grandpa’s back porch in Richmond, Virginia, where I grew up.
Every holiday, as sure as a turkey was on the table, my great uncle Ben Burroughs would bring a bushel of oysters fresh from the Lynnhaven River where he lived. Grandpa, Uncle Ben, my dad and all the uncles would slurp down oysters and drink whiskey neat while the women in the family hustled around the kitchen, mashing potatoes and basting that turkey.
The cousins dashed around the yard occasionally stopping to watch the hearty shuckers. Once I saw grandpa pop an oyster crab in his mouth and let it crawl down his throat. At least that’s what he told me. It’s a wonder I ever ate an oyster.
It did take years. I moved to the beach in the 1960s, learned about the Lynnhaven oyster’s long history and finally ate my share, mostly harvested from Capt. Irvin Evans’ beautiful oyster reefs on the river.
Sadly, by the 1980s the river was becoming polluted and Lynnhaven oysters were rare. One day, Capt. Evans called me to say he was retiring and had something for me. It was a quart of freshly shucked Lynnhavens, a farewell gift from the last of the great old time oystermen. Andrew and Barbara Fine joined me for a feast and we offered a toast to a bygone era.
By the 1990s only 1 percent of the river was safe for oystering. In 2002 Andrew was a founder of Lynnhaven River NOW and I joined in too. Thanks to the City, LRNow’s efforts, and the work of many others, pollution from septic tanks, dog waste and more was reduced, oyster reefs were built, more oysters were planted and they went to work filtering pollutants from the water.
By 2007, more than a fourth of the river was open to shellfish harvest and we celebrated with a few Lynnhavens along with “out of town” oysters. Today more than 50 percent, mostly in the Eastern Branch, is open and we have been celebrating an all-Lynnhaven oyster roast for years.
Cleaning up the next 50 percent will be hard, said LRNow Oyster Restoration Manager Brent James. Busy Virginia Beach Boulevard, I-264 and Town Center area all drain into the Western Branch, adding a heavy dose of pollutants, along with a lot of siltation that makes it difficult for oyster reefs to get established. The Western Branch, further upstream than the Eastern, is less salty–not as prime a habitat for filter feeding oysters, Brent said.
So, toasts at our oyster roast this year will not only be to the great news that more than half the river is open for oyster harvest, but also to a renewed effort to clean up our other half!
I like to think that Grandpa and Uncle Ben not only rolled over in the graves with news of the Lynnhaven oysters’ demise but also once again for the news of their comeback!
Find information on the Oyster Roast here: https://www.lynnhavenrivernow.org/events/24th-annual-oyster-roast/