Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Carlsbad Aquafarm is making locals shellfish
A self-shucked oyster, ready to eat in Carlsbad
In the parking lot, it takes me a moment to realize what’s missing. I’m standing beside the old power plant in Carlsbad, only I don’t recognize it at first, because the stack is gone. The defunct plant is being dismantled, and though I can’t exactly be sentimental toward a smokestack, it is disorienting to be without a landmark associated with so many fun Tamarack surf sessions.
Today, I’m parking here to shuck oysters. Which may seem like a non sequitur but has everything to do with that plant being closed.
An aqua farm offers tours on the banks of Agua Hedionda Lagoon
See, roughly since the plant went up in 1954, Carlsbad Aquafarm has been raising shellfish in its shadow. However, due to security concerns, the public wasn’t allowed to visit, so the aquafarm quietly harvested bivalves destined for restaurant menus. Last spring, following the closure of the plant, the aquafarm began opening its lagoon property to tours, and now all of its shellfish are sold directly to consumers.
That includes online pick-up orders, but plenty of the oysters in question are eaten on site, by tour participants. The hour-long tours begin at 10 am, noon, and 2 pm daily, and weekends in particular must be reserved weeks ahead of time. For $30, guests get a tour of the operation, a quick shucking tutorial, and six, fresh-from-the-water oysters to eat.
A cluster of mussels in the Carlsbad Aquafarm touch pool
The tour itself includes a stop at a touching pool, where guest may lay hands on oysters of various life stages. These range from baby oysters in tiny shells the size of a nickel, to five-year-old breeders, often six- or seven-inches wide. The aquafarm also raises mussels, which grow in clusters on a length of rope, and the touch pool includes examples of a new cultivar in development: scallops.
Much of this will be surprising to those of us who associate West Coast oyster farming with the much cooler climes of Washington and British Columbia. However, Carlsbad Aquafarm has established such ideal conditions over the decades, that its oysters reach three-inch harvest size after only eleven months — many farms require two years and longer.
A scallop in its shell: likely a future product of the aqua farm
Oysters and other shellfish are filter feeders, and the original aquafarm was established by an SDSU project to clean up the Agua Hedionda Lagoon (a name meaning "fetid water"). These days, the farm has a somewhat symbiotic relationship with the Carlsbad Desalination Plant, across the now clean and biodiverse lagoon. Water pulled into the desal plant has been pre-filtered by the oysters and mussels, while the desal intake ensures greater flow of ocean water into the lagoon, which in turn keeps the bivalves well fed.
I admit to being dubious, both regarding the quality of shellfish and my own shucking ability. But once we got down to the business of separating the oysters from their shells, I found the meat to be smooth and impeccably ocean clean. Though not as briny as, say, Blue Point oysters from the east coast, these are fantastic at $20 per dozen. The $8 per pound mussels I took home yielded an excellent and budget-friendly seafood pasta.
A barrel turned shucking station, with freshly harvested oysters ready to open
Both oysters and mussels are currently available to those not taking the tour through online preorder. Orders will be ready for pick-up in two hours, at which point the shellfish will have been cleaned and out of the water for only ten minutes. You can’t beat that in Southern California.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Carlsbad Aquafarm is making locals shellfish
Carlsbad Aquafarm is making locals shellfish
A self-shucked oyster, ready to eat in Carlsbad
In the parking lot, it takes me a moment to realize what’s missing. I’m standing beside the old power plant in Carlsbad, only I don’t recognize it at first, because the stack is gone. The defunct plant is being dismantled, and though I can’t exactly be sentimental toward a smokestack, it is disorienting to be without a landmark associated with so many fun Tamarack surf sessions.
Today, I’m parking here to shuck oysters. Which may seem like a non sequitur but has everything to do with that plant being closed.
An aqua farm offers tours on the banks of Agua Hedionda Lagoon
See, roughly since the plant went up in 1954, Carlsbad Aquafarm has been raising shellfish in its shadow. However, due to security concerns, the public wasn’t allowed to visit, so the aquafarm quietly harvested bivalves destined for restaurant menus. Last spring, following the closure of the plant, the aquafarm began opening its lagoon property to tours, and now all of its shellfish are sold directly to consumers.
That includes online pick-up orders, but plenty of the oysters in question are eaten on site, by tour participants. The hour-long tours begin at 10 am, noon, and 2 pm daily, and weekends in particular must be reserved weeks ahead of time. For $30, guests get a tour of the operation, a quick shucking tutorial, and six, fresh-from-the-water oysters to eat.
A cluster of mussels in the Carlsbad Aquafarm touch pool
The tour itself includes a stop at a touching pool, where guest may lay hands on oysters of various life stages. These range from baby oysters in tiny shells the size of a nickel, to five-year-old breeders, often six- or seven-inches wide. The aquafarm also raises mussels, which grow in clusters on a length of rope, and the touch pool includes examples of a new cultivar in development: scallops.
Much of this will be surprising to those of us who associate West Coast oyster farming with the much cooler climes of Washington and British Columbia. However, Carlsbad Aquafarm has established such ideal conditions over the decades, that its oysters reach three-inch harvest size after only eleven months — many farms require two years and longer.
A scallop in its shell: likely a future product of the aqua farm
Oysters and other shellfish are filter feeders, and the original aquafarm was established by an SDSU project to clean up the Agua Hedionda Lagoon (a name meaning "fetid water"). These days, the farm has a somewhat symbiotic relationship with the Carlsbad Desalination Plant, across the now clean and biodiverse lagoon. Water pulled into the desal plant has been pre-filtered by the oysters and mussels, while the desal intake ensures greater flow of ocean water into the lagoon, which in turn keeps the bivalves well fed.
I admit to being dubious, both regarding the quality of shellfish and my own shucking ability. But once we got down to the business of separating the oysters from their shells, I found the meat to be smooth and impeccably ocean clean. Though not as briny as, say, Blue Point oysters from the east coast, these are fantastic at $20 per dozen. The $8 per pound mussels I took home yielded an excellent and budget-friendly seafood pasta.
A barrel turned shucking station, with freshly harvested oysters ready to open
Both oysters and mussels are currently available to those not taking the tour through online preorder. Orders will be ready for pick-up in two hours, at which point the shellfish will have been cleaned and out of the water for only ten minutes. You can’t beat that in Southern California.
Comments