Har­poon brewer Katie Tame, left, fla­vored 100 bar­rels of stout with oys­ters from Skip Ben­nett, right, of Island Creek Oys­ters. (David Grossman)

By Greg Kit­sock
Wednes­day, Feb­ru­ary 24, 2010; E05

“Oys­ter stout” orig­i­nally sig­ni­fied a brew that paired well with oys­ters. The cus­tom of wash­ing down bivalves with a dark, roasty ale dates to 19^th-century Britain, where so many oys­ters were dredged from the Thames that pubs served them as a free snack, much as mod­ern bars do with pork rinds and peanuts.

Recently, two U.S. brew­eries have taken the term lit­er­ally, incor­po­rat­ing the essence of oys­ter into their beers.

“When they heard we were brew­ing an oys­ter stout, half the peo­ple were like, ‘Wow!’ and half scrunched up their faces,” says Gene Muller, founder and gen­eral man­ager of  Fly­ing Fish Brew­ing Co. in Cherry Hill, N.J.

Exit 1 Bayshore Oys­ter Stout debuted in Novem­ber, Con­tinue Reading »

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This is the 24^th year where the com­mu­nity sur­round­ing cen­tral Whid­bey Island cel­e­brates the onset of spring with annual Penn Cove Mus­sel Fes­ti­val. This year’s fes­ti­val will be held March 6^th and 7^th in Coupeville, Wash­ing­ton. It will once again be head­quar­tered at the Coupeville Recre­ation Hall down­town near the stores and restau­rants along Front Street. Tick­ets for all fes­ti­val activ­i­ties must be pur­chased here.

The Mus­sel, Beer and Wine Gar­den will only be going on Sat­ur­day, March 6^th. Mus­sels and bev­er­ages will be served start­ing at 11:30 am and go until 5:00 pm. Beer and Wine will con­tinue to be sold until 9:00 pm fol­low­ing the last set of music.

The ben­e­fi­ciary of the last two year’s Mus­sel, Beer and Wine Gar­den pro­ceeds and for this year as well will be the Boys & Girls Club of Coupeville.

The music on slate for this year’s fes­ti­val include a repeat per­for­mance by Mr. Mar­cus Whit­ing per­form­ing jazz piano and vocals from 12:00 noon until 2:30. He will be fol­lowed by another favorite of regional fes­ti­vals, the Blue­grass Celtic Band from Van­cou­ver, B.C., Tiller’s Folly, from 2:30 until 5:00. Fol­low­ing them is a real treat, we have a local pop­u­lar rock band, The Steve Trem­b­ley Band, and will play for us from about 5:30 to 9:00 pm.

Be pre­pared to have a great time!

Ques­tions: 360.678.5434 or www​.thep​en​ncov​emus​selfes​ti​val​.com

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Ups and downs: Habi­tat restored even as land goes to development

JOHN DODGE; Staff writer, The Olympian| • Pub­lished Feb­ru­ary 03, 2010

OLYMPIA — The health of Puget Sound is a mixed bag of improve­ment and con­tin­ued decline, accord­ing to a State of the Sound report issued Tues­day by the Puget Sound Partnership.

The part­ner­ship, cre­ated by the state Leg­is­la­ture in 2007 to help cure what ails Puget Sound by 2020, looked at 20 indi­ca­tors to eval­u­ate Con­tinue Reading »

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A new breed of oys­ter may encour­age aquaculture

Jan 28^th 2010 | LOS ANGELES | From The Econ­o­mist print edition

Getty ImagesThe breed­ing edge

MUCH of the bounty of the ocean is, these days, far less plen­ti­ful than it used to be. Scarcity has made oys­ters expen­sive, turn­ing this unat­trac­tive mol­lusc into a del­i­cacy for the rich. That could change if researchers find a way to breed a faster grow­ing and larger oyster.

As many gar­den­ers and farm­ers know, cross­breed­ing two wimpy spec­i­mens some­times pro­duces strong offspring—an effect known as hybrid vigour. Hybrid vigour is com­mon in plants and is found in some animals—though, some spec­u­late, it may be lack­ing in Euro­pean royalty.

Sev­eral years ago Den­nis Hedge­cock Con­tinue Reading »

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Posted By cduna­gan On Feb­ru­ary 1, 2010 @ 10:18 am Puget Sound Blogs In Busi­ness and indus­try, Fish­ing inter­ests, Humor, Recre­ation, Shell­fish

I love the reac­tion of new­com­ers to the North­west when they see a giant geo­duck clam ^[1] for the first time.

Some peo­ple laugh; oth­ers stare in dis­be­lief at the unique crea­ture that reminds some peo­ple of the male anatomy.

After you’ve lived in Wash­ing­ton state, you learn that this mas­sive mol­lusk is not only funny, it is big money on the inter­na­tional mar­ket. Geo­ducks are believed Con­tinue Reading »

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THE OLYMPIAN

Shore­line pro­gram is crit­i­cal for clean water, our sur­vival Hen­der­son Inlet. Mud Bay. Nisqually River. Wood­land Creek. These are unique areas across Thurston County that we all know. These are the areas where the water and land meet — these are our shore­lines. Thurston County con­tains 688 miles of shore­lines, and these areas are in peril.

We live, work, fish, swim, and boat here. We can­not take these shore­lines for granted. We build our houses on them to have the beau­ti­ful view. We place our ports and busi­nesses in them to have access to water­ways to ship goods. As a result, we have fewer func­tional shore­lines left. Indeed, pol­lu­tion Con­tinue Reading »

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Dear Friends:

As you know, over the last few months the Depart­ment of Nat­ural Resources has been involved in a con­certed process to develop our strate­gic plan.  In Novem­ber, we shared draft ele­ments of the plan and asked for your review and com­ments.  The response from that request has been remark­able.  Thank you for your thought­ful review and com­ments.  Your par­tic­i­pa­tion and ideas thus far have been the foun­da­tion for what I know will be a suc­cess­ful prod­uct that we all can use to achieve our impor­tant mission.

I want to take the oppor­tu­nity to update you Con­tinue Reading »

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They come from a long line of fish­ing fam­i­lies. They still fish the tra­di­tional under­wa­ter troughs and canyons, with the tra­di­tional gear. But they are watch­ing the indus­try strug­gle. As quo­tas are low­ered, and fish­ing days are reduced, it gets harder and harder to make a liv­ing the way their fathers and grand­fa­thers did. The fish­ing her­itage in Men­emsha is in dan­ger of slip­ping away.

Alec Gale and Tim Brod­er­ick get ready to move the “socks” out to sea. Seed mus­sels are poured into the socks, where they grow to mar­ket size. Pho­tos cour­tesy of Scott Lindell

But like any good busi­ness­men, Alec Gale and Tim Brod­er­ick keep their eyes open for oppor­tu­nity, for ways to adapt from a strug­gling seg­ment of the fish­ing indus­try to one that is grow­ing. So even though it is a lot of work, and a lot of risk, when the chance came to learn to grow and har­vest mus­sels, they jumped at the opportunity.

“We’ve been look­ing for exper­i­men­tal fish­eries for a while,” said Mr. Gale. “We’ve been look­ing for other ways to make it Con­tinue Reading »

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By James Wright, Asso­ciate Edi­tor

Seafood Busi­ness Mag­a­zine, Jan­u­ary 5, 2010

There are many ways to eat an oys­ter — smoked, fried, roasted, baked, boiled, broiled, stewed or steamed. Afi­ciona­dos, though, believe less is more and want their half shells raw, with Mother Nature as chef de cui­sine. The fed­eral gov­ern­ment, on the other hand, believes slurp­ing raw shell­fish is risky busi­ness and in Octo­ber pro­posed that all oys­ters from the Gulf of Mex­ico undergo post-harvest pro­cess­ing (PHP) dur­ing the warmer months to kill the Vib­rio vul­nifi­cus bac­te­ria, a nat­u­rally occur­ring organ­ism that can cause seri­ous — and poten­tially fatal — gas­troin­testi­nal ill­nesses. Essen­tially, the feds want to ban raw Gulf oys­ters for six to eight months a year.

Con­tinue Reading »

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By Cate Gable
Observer columnist

Tues­day, Decem­ber 29, 2009

LONG BEACH — Wash­ing­ton is in line to pick up a new con­gres­sional seat if U.S. Cen­sus Bureau pro­jec­tions for pop­u­la­tion hold true. For res­i­dents of Pacific and Wahki­akum coun­ties, this has the poten­tial of shift­ing us into a recon­fig­ured dis­trict of one of the Pacific Northwest’s most pow­er­ful politicians.

A 10^th House seat is likely if the state pop­u­la­tion Con­tinue Reading »

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By Mag­gie Koerth-Baker

Posted on boing​bo​ing​.net on Dec. 16, 2009

A cou­ple hun­dred thou­sand years ago, the planet became a much colder and drier place. In Africa, deserts expanded, species were wiped out and the human race was in deep trouble.

See, humans today may look pretty dif­fer­ent from one another but, genet­i­cally speak­ing, there’s not much diver­sity at all within our species. In fact, chim­panzees, which look pretty much the same from one indi­vid­ual to the next, are much more genet­i­cally diverse than we are. To sci­en­tists, that sug­gests that humans have come through a genetic bottleneck–a point where our num­bers shrunk dra­mat­i­cally, and a rel­a­tively small pop­u­la­tion had to rebuild the species. For about 20 years, genetic anthro­pol­o­gists have been com­par­ing the genes of mod­ern human pop­u­la­tions. Over time, they’ve used big­ger and big­ger sam­ples, and bet­ter and bet­ter analy­sis, to hone in on when our bot­tle­neck likely hap­pened, and how many humans man­aged to slip through it.

Con­tinue Reading »

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