Glucking down the muddy shore of Steamboat Island on a perfect spring day, I watch my feet with every stride. Hundreds of ragged, buff-colored shells lie before me, and I don’t want to step on them. I’d prefer that the morsel of meat contained within each one of them end up in my mouth, not squashed against the bottom my rubber boot.
“Do you want to try one?” asks Saleh Prohim, who manages this 25-acre parcel of tideland for Taylor Shellfish. The answer, of course, is yes. Prohim picks up an oyster, expertly pries it open with a knife, scrapes the slimy creature inside free of the shell, and hands it to me. I tip the still-live animal onto my tongue, and with it, the taste of South Puget Sound’s Totten Inlet.
My morning snack was just one of the about 400,000 Pacific oysters Taylor Shellfish will produce from this particular parcel each year. And that’s just a fraction of the total output the company reaps from the sum of its approximately 11,000 acres of Washington tideland. Taylor, headquartered in Shelton, Washington, is one of the oldest oyster operations in the state, and one of the largest producers of shellfish in the country. It’s in large part thanks to companies like Taylor that Washingtonians feel such pride and hunger for our locally produced oysters.
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