The Oyster Crisis
Why Oyster Prices are Skyrocketing
J. C. Lai
WITH A CREAMY AND BUTTERY FLAVOUR, OYSTERS ARE THE SYMBOL OF HIGH-END DECADENCE, CONSIDERED ONE OF THE LUXURIES OF TODAY’S WORLD. However, a look into the food’s history raises the question: “why are oysters so expensive and what makes them the luxury that they are today?”
Having historically been associated as a ‘peasant food,’ oysters saw a significant rise in popularity in cities like New York, London, and Paris in the late 18th century due to the invention of oyster cultivation, drastically increasing its accessibility and decreasing its price. Its popularity, particularly in New York City, which was crowned the “Oyster Capital of the World” in the 19th century, saw the establishment of oyster cellars and oyster bars all over the world. By 1900, New Yorkers were estimated to be consuming 1 million oysters per day.
However, the boom in oyster sales during the 18th and 19th centuries, coupled with rising environmental issues, has seen the supply of oysters significantly contract and its price rising dramatically, making it the luxury that it is today.
The industrialisation and overfishing of oysters, particularly during the back end of the 19th century, saw the disruption of the delicate balance between oyster populations and marine ecosystems, resulting in a collapse of many wild oyster populations, particularly in heavily fished regions such as New York’s Eastern seaboard and France’s Marennes-Oleron. Furthermore, the intensified harvesting efforts of the 19th century led to insufficient regard for sustainability for oyster beds around the world, permanently diminishing their productivity in producing oysters.
Not only has the overfishing of oysters caused a fall in the supply of the luxury food, but it has also had cascading effects on the marine ecosystem, causing countless negative ecological consequences. The reduction in oysters has led to decreased water filtration, lower water clarity, and excessive nutrient levels in the world’s oceans due to their ability to naturally filter feeders, remove excess nutrients from the water, and improve water quality. This has led to harmful algal blooms and oxygen depletion in estuarine and coastal ecosystems, hurting the quality of water and its habitants in these areas.
As more people moved to the coast, the dredging of the water and increased dumping of sewage in oyster-growing waters has also contributed to the falling supply of oysters. Not only has coastal movement caused the destruction of oyster ecosystems due to the excavation of materials and building of land over oyster-growing waters, dumping of junk in the ocean’s waters has caused outbreaks of typhoid and other diseases which has forbidden the harvesting of oysters in certain areas.
As the oyster industry adapted to the destruction of oyster-growing ecosystems and the need for environmentally sustainable processes, the shift to artificially grow them in oyster farms has caused prices to quickly skyrocket and attributes to their high prices today. Not only do oyster farms require labour-intensive production for constant monitoring and maintenance to ensure the correct conditions are in place for oysters to grow, the ever-growing demand for oysters as a luxury food item, particularly in upscale restaurants, will see prices of oysters continue to rise for the foreseeable future. What a sad day for oyster lovers.