At the New York Harbor School, Growing Oysters for Credit

Beneath a floating dock off Governors Island, tucked behind the squat octagonal white ventilation tower for the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, there are oysters growing in New York Harbor.

And not just any oysters. These little bivalves, 500,000 strong, make up the largest concentrated oyster population that the harbor has seen in perhaps a century.

On a recent spring day, Pete Malinowski, who tends to these oysters, removed one of the metal grates that have been fitted into the dock’s surface, revealing a series of silos, as he calls the 60-gallon plastic tubs in which his charges live.

Mr. Malinowski, 27, is a second-generation oysterman whose parents, Sarah and Steve, run the Fishers Island Oyster Farm in Block Island Sound.

But Mr. Malinowski is not farming oysters for commercial purposes, and the person to whom he reported this growth data was not some leathery old sea dog in a woolen cap but a fresh-faced 17-year-old from Canarsie, Brooklyn, named Jeptha Sullivan.

Mr. Malinowski is an aquaculture teacher at the Urban Assembly New York Harbor School, a part of the city’s public school system. Mr. Sullivan just completed his senior year there with the distinction of having been named the school’s most experienced diver. Read more here.

Zuppa di Clams from Pasta Cosi

A great paste to start any zuppa di peche: clams, shrimps; a great foundation. See how to make it.

Lynnhaven Oysters Make a Comeback

Once a delicacy requested by presidents and kings, the Lynnhaven Oyster is making a comeback in its native river. Watch the video.

The Taste of an Oyster

An amazing amount of ink has been spilled over the years in an effort to nail the taste of oysters. The essayist Michel de Montaigne compared them to violets. Eleanor Clark mentioned their “shock of freshness.” M. F. K. Fisher was one of many to point out that they are “more like the smell of rock pools at low tide than any other food in the world.” More....

Irradiation may make slurping safer

Timid raw bar recruits may soon run out of excuses to hoist a halfshell. Live oysters, it appears, may not be much of a health risk after all, if a newly approved yet controversial shellfish processing technique in the United States catches on.

Read more here.

Study finds oysters appear to fight breast cancer

A compound found in oysters could help prevent and treat cancer, particularly breast cancer, a professor from Louisiana State University said Tuesday.

Jack Losso, Ph.D. and an associate professor in the food science department, has been doing research in this area since 2001 and has found that ceramide, a lipid found in oysters, prevents blood from getting to tumors in the body. Without nutrients from blood, cancer cells can’t multiply.
Read more about it here.

How to shuck a clam