When your oysters are 40 feet down in a Maine estuary, you can’t simply grab them at low tide, as the Hama Hama Company does. Scully is one of the only oyster growers in the world to harvest primarily by diving and handpicking them off the bottom. It’s labor-intensive, but less disturbing to the bottom ecology than dredging. Scully used to harvest year-round, until one January when an ice sheet swept away her boat while she was underwater. Now she takes off January to March.

After I visited Glidden Point, I traveled upriver to try to find the Glidden Middens. I’d read about this mound of oyster shells left by Native Americans 2,000 years ago. For an hour I wandered the hills that line the Damariscotta, searching in vain for the middens. Then, at a spot where the bank had given way, the answer became clear: I was standing on them. All those hills were the middens, uncountable millions of shells piled over acres and acres, a forest growing atop them. The renowned productivity of the Damariscotta was nothing new. Its oysters had been helping humans become grounded in place for a long, long time.

Where to Find Them:

Glidden Points and Hama Hamas are mainstays in many oyster bars. Also, both growers ship them in ice-packed coolers—a great way to ensure that your oysters were in the sea the day before they go into your mouth.

Glidden Point
Oyster Sea Farm
Edgecomb, ME
207/633-3599
www.oysterfarm.com

Hama Hama
Oyster Company
Lilliwaup, WA
360/877-5811
www.hamahamaoysters.com

"Bicoastal Bivalves" comes to ARTINFO from the October/November 2007 issue of Culture + Travel magazine.