Published on 10/10/05
BY TONY BARTELME
Of The Post and Courier StaffBULL’S BAY —The oyster industry in South Carolina is a shell of its former self, but a few entrepreneurs are trying to keep local oystering afloat, with strategies such as marketing oysters through the Internet and creating new Lowcountry oysters that look better on dinner plates.
Will McNelis and Jeff Spahr don’t fit the stereotype of crusty old fishermen. McNelis designs Web sites and guides kayak trips; Spahr sells real estate.
Two years ago, McNelis and Spahr created localoysters.com, a company that uses its Web site to take orders. “We wanted a name that people would remember,” Spahr said. “But the trick in all this is to get local seafood to people.”
Once they get the orders, Spahr, McNelis and several colleagues pick clusters from a bank on the back side of Bull’s Island. They process them at Carolina Seafood in McClellanville and then deliver the oysters to people in and around the area.
“It all depends on the tides, but I’d say 90 percent of the time we pick the oysters that morning and get them to people the same day,” McNelis said one afternoon while puttering up Awendaw Creek. In the distance was a mound of oyster shells discarded by Seewee Indians thousands of years ago.
The business operates only during oyster season, which begins about now (October) and ends in late spring, and caters mainly to people throwing oyster roasts. Spahr said the service sold 300 bushels last season, double what it did the first year. He expects to sell twice as many this year. The service charges about $25 a bushel.
Using the Internet to market seafood is nothing new. Lobstermen in Maine have a particularly strong presence on the Web. CharlestonSeafood.com has been on the Web since 1998, selling local and nonlocal seafood to customers across the country.
“More often than not we discourage (overnight) shipping of oysters, because they’re essentially shipping rock,” said Robert Dodenhoff, a partner in the company.
McNelis and Spahr said their focus is on selling local seafood to local people.
Their business is tiny compared with the oyster factories of old. In the early 1900s, canning factories lined the South Carolina coast and employed more than 3,500 people. Three canneries were in the McClellanville area; leftover shells were used to pave the town’s streets.
The oyster industry died off after World War II. The canneries are gone now, but a few oystermen still work the creeks. In 2004, they picked 92,543 bushels.
Today, the state’s oyster fishermen are more focused on filling niches in the seafood industry, not producing massive quantities of oysters, said Ray Rhodes, an economist with the state Department of Natural Resources. “The more innovative producers are now specializing in singles, or what we call cups.”
The Lowcountry’s briny oysters grow in clusters. While they’re fun to pick through at oyster roasts, clusters are a headache for restaurant owners. Chefs prefer oysters in single shells because they’re easier to prepare and serve, said Bill Cox, owner of Island Fresh Seafood in Yonge’s Island. They also command higher prices than clusters, he said.
With help from the Department of Natural Resources and research sponsored by the S.C. Sea Grant Consortium, Cox’s company is trying to grow local single oysters.
Cox said his company hatched a group of local single oysters this spring and hopes to have them ready for harvest next fall.
If successful, the company plans to sell oyster seeds to other growers. “There used to be an oyster factory a half-mile down the road on Yonge’s Island,” Cox said. “We’re trying to bring oysters back.”