ALLIGATOR HARBOR — Under a brilliant blue sky, a wet-suit-clad Clay Lovel drops down into waist-deep water, groping in the cloudy jade brine.
He tosses away a predatory conch before his older brother Ben, on deck, grabs a hook, and together they haul aboard their Carolina Skiff what looks like an oversized fry basket. The men pry it open, and onto the boat’s stern clatter dozens and dozens of Crassostrea virginica — the common eastern oyster.
It’s the same type of oyster that grows wild in coastal waters from Canada, down along the East Coast to the Gulf of Mexico, including nearby Apalachicola Bay. But the Lovels’ bivalves didn’t start off here as an offering from nature. They came from a shellfish hatchery near Tampa, leftovers from an oyster recovery project.
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