Cape May Salt Oyster

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The town of Cape May was once filled with large heaps of shells bleached white by the sun and its port was lined with long buildings facing the water. Oysters once streamed out of here: they were collected in barrels, loaded onto trucks and dispatched to Philadelphia. The shells are all that remain of the past glory of Delaware Bay, sheltered by the slender peninsula ending at Cape May, where Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania meet.
In Colonial Philadelphia the sellers used to clatter up and down the streets, which were often paved with shells; the oysters were eaten raw, in stew, preserved in brine or fried and served with chicken salad. Back then, places selling oysters were as common as present-day pizzerias.

Overfishing, pollution, increased water temperatures and parasitic diseases are responsible for the crisis which began during the Great Depression and saw oysters decrease in both number and size. While the estuary was home to 1,400 boats with 2,300 men in 1879, there are now fewer than 50 boats and 150 men involved in cultivating and gathering oysters. Some studies maintain that the oyster farms in the upper bay were already destroyed during the Second World War due to sailing boats being replaced by motor boats. But today the bay is cleaner, partly due to environmental programs implemented by the three states and partly due to the decline of heavy industry in Philadelphia. These reasons encourage optimism that local oysters can once again flourish in their habitat.

The Presidium

The Cape May Salt Oyster has become a Slow Food Presidium to maintain a low environmental-impact system of cultivation tried and tested in France. According to this technique, oyster sprats are produced in hatcheries and then placed on nets hanging from racks stretching across the shallows exposed to the tide. These oysters, ‘planted’ in the sea, feed naturally by filtering ocean water and are not given any artificial feed or antibiotics. The success of these new sustainable farms is a sign of the bay’s recovered health, which Slow Food wishes to promote by supporting the activity of the few remaining fishermen and significantly developing the local and international market for oysters. A first promotional initiative has already been accomplished with the Hotel Plaza in New York serving raw Cape May oysters on large trays of ice in its Oyster Bar.

Production Area: New Jersey State, Delaware Bay, Cape May
Presidium Coordinators: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)