Humans
Homo sapiens
Homo sapiens have been impacting the world of the Olympia oyster at the edge of the San Francisco Bay since the first human inhabitants settled on the fecund shores perhaps 10,000 years ago. Most of this Holocene epoch has been a time of reciprocity and coexistence, where the bivalves of the mudflats—clams, mussels, and oysters—provided one of many sources of human sustenance, allowing Indigenous Tribes to live with relative stability in the area for thousands of years.
Map of San Francisco Bay showing the dramatic filling in of wetlands from 1850-1960 (yellow), as well as the approximate location of many of the intact shellmounds as directly observed by N.C. Nelson in his 1908 survey around the Bay. Many were known to be mortuary complexes.
Change happened quickly in the 19th and 20th centuries, and now in the 21st. With the Gold Rush came spectacular flooding of the Bay with sediment from hydraulic mining in the foothills. The rise of towns, cities, industry, and ports filled in and rebuilt the shorelines, leaving the Bay about one-third smaller than its original footprint. The inclination to fill culminated in a 1950s plan to barricade the rivers and fill half of the bay, leaving only shipping channels. But in this century, sentiment and action are flowing the other way: the great salt ponds of the South Bay are being restored to wilderness marshland, sewage treatment plants are improving water quality, and countless efforts are going into mapping, monitoring, and restoring the great estuary and the abundant life it supports. The San Francisco Bay is one of the most thoroughly studied, regulated, restored, analyzed, and acted upon aquatic ecosystems in the world.
Awaswas, Chalon, Karkin, Mutsun, Ramaytush, Rumsen, Tamyen, and Coast Miwok, are languages used in the territories surrounding the San Francisco Bay to describe the world where water meets the land in mudflats, tule groves, and marsh. Hakkaw is a word surfacing for the first foods of the Bay mudflats: clam, mussel, or oyster, though which is not certain. Each language has verb-based names for flora and fauna that describe the attributes and histories of myriad species within that traditional territory. Increasing our awareness of the great diversity of Indigenous cultures and languages can help us all better parse the English language when telling these stories of the estuary, for language informs our relationships with those stories and the rest of the natural world. The English language is what we have to work with to write this website. But we can learn alternate words and names, use imagery and stories to expand our notions of what is possible, learn from the past, and reimagine different and better ways of engaging each other and nature.
San Francisco Bay is one of the most studied, monitored, and analyzed aquatic systems in the world.
In 1915, a doctor in Connecticut linked oysters to the transmission of typhoid fever. From that point on, oysters are recognized as a barometer of the waters they are from. Through the 1920s, as human waste was discharged into the local waterways around San Francisco Bay making them a source of disease, people turned away from eating clams, mussels, and oysters. Though the Olympia oyster was not part of the San Francisco oyster industry that shut down by 1930 (it was Eastern oysters being raised and harvested), pollution was affecting its hidden population.
In 1963, the California Fish and Wildlife Department issued a comprehensive study of the California oyster industry that included robust information about the Olympia oyster alongside the Eastern oyster and the Pacific oyster. It states, “pollution can affect oysters in three principal ways: direct poisoning; smothering by sludge; or raising the coliform bacteria count to where there is danger of typhoid and paratyphoid infection of consumers. Domestic sewage is usually the source of the latter contamination, which does not necessarily affect the oyster itself. Industrial pollutants often contain substances that are toxic to oysters, either immediately or after continued exposure. Pollutants may, by combining with the oxygen in the water, lower the oxygen content below that necessary to sustain marine fauna.”
It is hard to know the specific effect of pollution today on Oly populations. While efforts are ongoing to clean the bay, surveys of toxins in fish and other wildlife still register high levels, suggesting that Olys are also accumulating pollution in their tissue. Olympia oyster restoration in San Francisco Bay is, therefore, not for human consumption, but because these little oysters are a superb first responder working alongside myriad human efforts to heal the Bay and rebuild its resilience into the future.
Keeping tabs on how Olympia oysters can benefit the Bay.
Ostrea lurida, the little Olympia oyster, might be considered a powerhouse actor in the work addressing the three scourges arising from a warming climate and increasing emissions, resulting in too much CO2 absorbed into the ocean from the atmosphere.
Olympia oyster research and restoration is being done by a devoted and diverse group of scientists.
Since 2000, the list of Olympia oyster research projects and restoration efforts has continued to grow in number and breadth of participation. These individuals and groups, (including the California State Coastal Conservancy, the Smithsonian Institute, and others) have partnered in many ways to build momentum and a dedicated community of experts and enthusiasts determined to see this foundation of native ecological communities return to abundance and hold down its low-profile, but important, niche in nearshore bay habitats. Adding Oly-centric productivity to the plethora of efforts to promote a healthy Bay has motivated the Native Olympia Oyster Collaborative since their first meetings in 2007 and their official formation in 2018. NOOC convenes a coastwide community of practice around Ostrea lurida outreach, restoration, conservation, and aquaculture. Their comprehensive website and storymap listing Oly restoration projects from Baja California at the southern range of Olympia oysters to British Columbia at the northern end of the range is a crucial resource for ongoing Olympia oyster research and population recovery. Visit NOOC
Heron’s Head oyster balls and restoration project, San Francisco. Olympia oysters grow on these man-made structures, as well as the adjacent rip rap in one of the most industrialized corners of the Bay.
Olys and humans can co-exist easily together. Olys need clean and healthy water to be healthy themselves, but they do not necessarily need a ‘wild’ habitat. They are happy to cling to any kind of substrate, natural or man-made, preferably shells, and to find tiny pockets of warmer water among the crags of bigger shells strewn near power plants or refineries. They can recruit to pilings of marinas or the human-placed boulders that are considered riprap—shorelines of cities and towns that abut the bay or waterways. They continue to surprise us by where they find a home. The Olympia oysters in the San Francisco Bay, however, should not be considered for human consumption. There is still way too much pollution in the Bay to make them safe for eating. There are also not enough of them to sustain any kind of foraging by humans.
But humans have always loved to eat oysters, and the benefits of growing oysters in clean waters, such as Tomales Bay, have made oyster farms among the most sustainable food producers on the planet. As they grow, oysters improve the surrounding water, making it healthier and more hospitable to other organisms. Cultivating these protein-packed nuggets, that don’t require input of fresh water or fertilizer, should make growing and eating farmed oysters a priority for us humans as we choose what we eat to help restore resilience into our local ecosystems.
One of the most important human traits is the ability to imagine. Using our imagination to envision a San Francisco Bay with clean water and ample oyster beds—with a plethora of fish and birds, and invertebrates that rely on its unique habitat—is also a priority. By imagining a different Bay, a Bay with Olys, we can then make it a reality.
