Brewster Hosts Record-Breaking ‘Oyster Sunday’

BREWSTER – The department of natural resources kicked off its popular “Oyster Sundays” at Mants Landing last weekend. Approximately 12,000 oysters were given out to a record 276 shellfish permit holders, many of whom will return next Sunday for more.

The DNR’s annual multi-week event is the only one of its kind on Cape Cod. The beds were open for two-and-a-half hours at low tide on Sunday to current recreational shellfish permit holders, including 124 seniors and 152 families, who harvested up to five quarts each, estimated at 40 to 50 oysters per household.

Senior Natural Resources Officer and Shellfish Warden Ryan Burch welcomed the exuberant crowd gathered in the Mants Landing parking lot at 10:30 Sunday morning.

“You’ll see that there are a lot of big oysters out there this year, so be creative.” Burch noted they could arrange the shellfish in the baskets however they want in order to maximize their catch, as long as they “keep it level and don’t mound them” at the five-quart line.

Cages were then opened, permits were checked and recorded, and a steady stream of enthusiastic oyster-lovers young and old brought empty baskets and buckets out to the town’s oyster grant, quickly reaching their limit.

“We have more oysters — adult size, legal size, than we did last year, and we went for eight weeks last year, so it’s a great, great year,” Burch said.

The event has evolved and become more popular over the years. Burch said when Barnstable County first made funds available for shellfish propagation, his former department head, Bob Mants, started to experiment with growing oysters. “His idea was the brainchild of the whole program,” Burch said.

Initially, the DNR began Oyster Sundays off Ellis Landing several years ago as a recreational program for the community. Volunteers would scatter legal size oysters in the rock beds in the bay near Ocean Edge for shellfish permit holders to harvest. But the tides, the slippery rocks, and the time commitment proved challenging.

“It was a ton of work — hard, physical work,” Burch said. They were taking the oysters from the cages at Mants and moving them to Ellis. But the volunteer population was aging, and for many permit holders, navigating the rocks was difficult. The DNR revisited how to share the town’s bounty of oysters and decided to move the event to the town’s oyster grant at Mants Landing. It was safer and easier for the oyster community. The location — between Paine’s Creek and Saint’s Landing beaches — is also better because the tide variation exposes the beach and oyster farm for a lot longer, and it’s more accessible.

The DNR takes pride in building an environmentally conscious community at this and other outreach opportunities.

“It’s a win-win; raising oysters is good for the environment. Of all types of farming, this is the most environmentally sound,” Shellfish Warden Jay Hurley said. His colleague, Warden Dennis Morris, said Brewster has the best shellfish program on the Cape — especially the Sunday harvests that are so social and fun. Permit-holders can get oysters for several weeks without any hassle.

The investment has been very successful from an environmental and recreational standpoint. Oysters clean the water; an adult oyster filters 50 to 70 gallons of water per day. For Brewster, which doesn’t have a problem with nitrogen in the bay, the oyster grant plays a small part in removing nitrogen, Burch said, but a notable benefit is the oysters spawning and settling in other places in the bay.

AmeriCorps volunteer Savannah Gray joined Burch on the flats from setup until the tide came in just after 1 p.m. DNR team members fielded questions all day; Gray most frequently heard, “Can you open up another cage?” and “How do you find the best oysters?”

Burch said it was “by far our biggest event to date, and it was great to see a lot of new people coming out.” For some, it was their first exposure to shellfishing. “We’ve really created a community around food, shellfishing, and the whole experience. I heard a lot of sharing of recipes out there — how to cook them and how to eat them.” The department’s soon-to-be-published shellfish cookbook, “Favorites from the Flats,” was a popular topic during oyster harvesting. Burch encouraged participants to submit their favorite recipes, stories, and photos related to the flats and happy times spent there. The book is set for publication the second week in December.

Burch praised the DNR’s community of volunteers for the oyster program, including AmeriCorps Cape Cod. “We really depend on the volunteers to help us because it’s super labor intensive to grow this quantity of shellfish — having that strong core of volunteers is so important and we are grateful to all of them.”

Burch is delighted that the program not only provides participants with delicious oysters, a great source of protein, but that it has grown to feed other people in the community.

“For the last five or six years, we have held a food drive during the Oyster Sunday before Thanksgiving to help stock up local food pantries. We fill up two of our trucks with food donations — people are incredibly generous.”

Oyster Sundays will continue weekly until stock runs out. Burch estimates that the stock will last through the end of November, but they will assess the population and take a break if needed so they can offer oysters for Thanksgiving. The schedule is available on the town’s website.