Growing up in Northwest Georgia, I never consumed much seafood. I viewed it as a luxury meal, something sophisticated my parents would eat on vacation when we wanted to treat ourselves. My dad would order crabs and my mom would order shrimp and grits, but I would turn my nose up at the fishy smell and stick to the kid’s menu. I was not ready to try new things, and my hometown didn’t have much seafood to offer anyway. When I moved to Athens for college, my pallet was opened to many more options. I began to push myself to try more food, and I was led again to seafood. At Marker Seven Coastal Grill, I was met with an expansive menu: blackened salmon, fried shrimp, grouper nuggets, and oysters. The food is delicious, and I am happy to step out of my comfort zone, but I found myself curious as to where it was sourced to be prepared for customers in Athens, Georgia. I was surprised to find that the seafood I was eating was not harvested along the Georgia Coast. To get to the root of this issue and discover what exactly is happening to the seafood along my local coastline, I journeyed East on a Maymester focusing on seafood harvesting along the Georgia Coast.
Addison Simmons (left) and Bryan Fluech (Right) pull up a crab trap and learn about recreational crabbing practices.
The marshland of Georgia is a rich environment full of biodiversity and natural beauty. During my days with the UGA Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant program, I sein for fish along the shoreline, pull crab traps up from docks, prepare a basket of shrimp for a low country boil, and I am amazed by all the resources I find here. I quickly realize the lack of seafood from my local coastline is not due to a lack of volume- there is plenty of seafood to be harvested here. I was at even more of a loss than I was before. If the lack of local seafood is not due to a low quantity, why was I not eating Georgia oysters?
To find the answer to this question, I spoke to Laura and Perry Solomon from Tybee Oyster Company.
Tybee Oyster Company at Bull River Ranch began when Laura and Perry Solomon returned to Georgia after traveling the world for Perry’s 20 years of military service. During their travels, they focused on studying sustainable practices that they could bring back to Georgia- and when they did return, they settled on founding a floating oyster farm in the coastal waters of Chatham County. Here they place hundreds of Flip Farm cages full of oyster spat, or baby oysters. UGA Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant supplies Tybee Oyster with the oyster seed, which is grown at their Shellfish Research Lab on Skidaway Island. Once the tiny oyster seed reaches a certain size, they are sold to farmers, like the Solomons, who place them cages on oyster leases where they grow into market-size oysters. The Solomons are the first to use floating cages in coastal Georgia. This gear gives the oysters easy access to phytoplankton in the water column, allowing them to grow fast, while requiring less maintenance.
The Domestic Field Study Maymester course that I attended, Writing and Community at the Georgia Coast, exposed me to the Solomon’s eco-conscious company, allowing me to explore the scientific community along the coast fighting for sustainable seafood harvesting. I participated in experiential learning opportunities through days out on the field of our state’s coast. Through these long days in the coastal communities, I discovered the importance of programs like Marine Extension and Georgia Sea in providing technical assistance and resources to professionals, helping them grow their businesses and adopt sustainable practices that preserve our coastal resources. The work of Tybee Oyster and Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant is imperative to cultivating a thriving coastal habitats and human communities.
Addison Simmons, Journalism Student from the University of Georgia, shares her experience along the Georgia Coast as part of a service-learning domestic field study course at UGA entitled “Writing and Community at the Georgia Coast.”