Oyster Men-Life on deck with PEI’s oyster farmers, working the ocean like a gold mine.

Dawn slowly broke, spilling light across the 12.9-kilometre ribbon of the Confederation Bridge as I rode into the chilly wind at 5:00 am. Beneath the rising sun, I was chasing the red earth of Prince Edward Island — soil rich with iron, history, and the roots of stories like Anne of Green Gables. Ahead of me, waited a world of salty air, famous potatoes, and seafood pulled fresh from the Atlantic.

A small island with a big offering, I’d set my alarm for 3:30 am and departed from the home of the Acadians I was staying at in Dieppe to make the roughly 2.5-hour journey (life is slower on a dirtbike) to discover my first ever underwater farming experience. I first had to cross PEI in search of another smaller island to meet the crew of an incredible oyster farming operation in the rich waters of Malpeque Bay.

    Lennox Island Reserve, known locally as L’nui Mnikuk is a 540-hectare reserve connected to northwestern PEI by a short bridge. Here, some of Canada's finest oysters are raised in the Malpeque Bay, known to local Mi’kmaq as Malpek or Kikji-Sipukwek. 

    Ancestral occupants of the region, the Mi’kmaq lived and roamed freely on what was originally known to them as Abegweit, or modern day PEI. This all changed when European settlers arrived in vast numbers in the 1700s and began to take over the land to harvest its resources. Documented land owner at the time, James Montgomery, allowed the Indigenous locals to move to Lennox Island to live as they had pre-Europeans. Eventually, after decades of lobbying for protection, the island was purchased in 1870 by the London-based group, The Aborigines Protection Society, for 400 pounds. Then, in 1873, it was swallowed up by the nation when PEI joined Canada.

    Today, I’m greeted on the watersedge by Chris Sapier, his business partner Andy, and a small group of “still rising from the dead” teenagers who make up this crew of hardworking oyster men. I’m issued a lifejacket and a pair of rubber overalls, which I'm told I’ll need before the morning is over if I truly want to see how oyster farming is done.

We set out just before 7:00 am to beat the heat of the day in a dory boat and another boat modified specifically to farm and transport shellfish, or more specifically, mollusks. The bay is calm, the water like glass, and there’s a refreshing salty breeze as the outboard motor pushes us along. 

Chris, or Ghip as his friends affectionately refer to him, lives on Lennox Island. I was fortunate to be put in touch with him via his sister-in-law Kim, whom I’d worked with back in my work-all-day, party-all-night line cook days. His mother was Mi’kmaq and his band status allows him to live and work here. He and business partner Andy are a small but growing operation, and if small businesses weren’t hard enough, Andy suffered a stroke after an accident a short while back and has been forced to re-familiarize himself with a lot of the operation. For Ghip and Andy, it’s a delicate work-life balance. 

Pulling into the bay, the water is filled with perfectly aligned black floats, all with six rectangular nets below them that resemble tiny underwater housing complexes designed to raise oysters. Oyster apartments, if you will. Each is spaced wide enough apart to maneuver a boat between each row. I count one section we pass, and it's roughly 33 floats long and 33 floats wide, nearly 1100 oyster apartments, and that is just one section of many!    

We pull up to a floating dock with a large tumbler on it, similar in design to a mining trommel on a wash plant you might have seen on gold mining shows. It’s the large, expensive piece of spinning steel that usually breaks before the gold mine operator pulls out some welding equipment and a large hammer to bring it back to life in dramatic reality TV fashion. The duo explains that the oysters are fed into the machine, then two guys watch at the top to remove any mussels or similar problem crustaceans, then they fall into the tumbler where the machine sorts them by size. 

Just then, a crew of young men manning one boat pulls up with blue plastic bins full of small oysters. These tiny shells look to be no bigger than an inch in size. Now, despite the fact that I am extremely excited to be on my first ever oyster boat, I forget to recognize that to the team of four that just pulled up, me being here at 7:30 am with my camera in their face, a mouth full of questions, filming them unloading oysters in all of their rubber gear might have been a bit much for the start of what is their daily routine. 

 My first job was washing dishes, and if you’d shown up to my Saturday morning shift to watch me pick gum out of ashtrays before washing them at 14 years old in my rubber apron and dishwashing gloves, I probably would not have been full of shimmering excitement. Still, they were all very friendly.

They unload six plastic bins of tiny oysters and start feeding them into the tumbler while partner Andy and one of the oyster men, Landon, pick out the undesirables, and the tumbler sorts them for size. We get to chatting while things are spinning and sorting, and partner Andy mentions that in the past, he used to be a gold miner. I get the impression the two businesses aren’t so different from each other. Both require working your ass off, some serious knowledge of the job, and a great deal of luck to strike mineral or oyster gold.

As the oysters are sorted by size into a series of plastic totes below, Chris comes over to inspect the crop. He grabs a couple to show me that as they grow, the outer lip gets bigger, and when tumbled through the machine, the soft new edge is chipped away. To combat this, the oysters use a lot of energy to regrow their lip, and this causes them to grow faster overall. Out of the water, tumbled, sorted, inspected, back to the water, and round and round the cycle goes while the oyster grows.

The oyster men offer to take me out on their boat, fitted with a boom and hydraulics, to show me how they harvest the oyster nets. I put on my standard-issued rubber overalls, and as the sun hits them, I can immediately feel sweat start to run down my legs. Our boat plods along through the floating rows while a rope attaching the oyster apartments runs along a pulley lifting the oysters out of the water. The men stop, remove the nets and dump the oysters into totes, smacking free any stuck ones from the net's bottom. They check if they are ready by taking them out and inspecting the lip of the exterior shell. If the lip has grown to a point where it can easily break off, they are ready to tumble. 

Some of the bags come up with a green algae stuck to them. Andrew, who has chosen likely the most comfortable work outfit today, is going shirtless with orange rubber overalls. He says that if the algae is smothering the oysters, it becomes a problem because the oysters can’t filter their water, but usually it's minor and the men just remove it from the net. Before going back under the water, the oysters are left float-side down with the bags out of the water. They spend a day in the sun to kill off any potential algae and allow them to purge before being flipped back over. 

We take our haul back to the sorting boat where Chris inspects a few of this larger batch with a shellfish gauge, a special measuring tool. Oysters grow at a rate of around 1” per year from initial seed size. Chris explains that there are three main sizes buyers are looking for here, and the bigger the oyster, the more money, but also the more risk, as they might die off before being harvested. The first size is a cocktail, a 2” oyster that at the time was netting around $0.30 each. Next was a medium, at about 3”, getting $0.50 each. Then a large, 3.5” size, fetching around $0.70. This business relies on quality and volume to make a go of it. 

Typically, a buyer would call them up and request a specific size, and if Chris and Andy's brand of Schooner Lane Oysters are ready to go, they’ll harvest what the buyer needs and ship them out. Before the buyer can take the crop to market for human consumption, they need to be “sunk” for 14 days. There aren’t any predators in the area, like otters who would try to eat the oysters, however, they are susceptible to water impurities like bird feces. No shit, of all things you would need to worry about, it’s literally bird shit. When the birds fly over or sit on the oyster floats, their poop lands in the water and oysters near the surface could ingest the tainted water, where it could then be passed onto whomever consumes them. To counter this, the oysters are sunk under the water for a full two weeks to allow for any possible impurities to sift through them before winding up as delectable aphrodisiacs on a bed of crushed ice, next to wedges of fresh lemon the world over. 

Mid-conversation, Chris drops to the deck of the tumbling platform and reaches beneath it. Like a bootlegger with a secret stash, he lifts a hidden basket brimming with ocean-fresh oysters — gleaming, perfect, and alive with the sea. These aren’t just any oysters; they’re his private collection, hand-picked from millions. He offers one with a proud grin. I’m standing among artisans who have nurtured these shell-bound treasures from seed to slurp. Turning it down would be like Martha Stewart ignoring a hot stock tip — unthinkable.

I’ve shucked a few oysters in my day, and I still have a small scar on my left hand to show just how good I am at it. I let the experts handle these; Chris cracks the first one as the team of oyster men gather around. I get the impression that there isn’t usually a break in the work day for a team meeting over Chris’s stash of freshly shucked oysters, and no one wants to let this opportunity pass them by.

Dylan, who’d been guiding me through the rhythm of the hydraulic boat, pops open an oyster with practiced ease, slicing beneath it to free it from its shell. Despite his expertise however, he admits he’s not a fan — comparing the experience to swallowing a fresh loogie straight from a congested chest. It’s not the most appetizing image, but I get where he’s coming from. Oysters for me rank higher for taste and experience than for visual appeal.

With a suck and slurp I down the first one. It’s the freshest, most complete meal on the planet. There is nothing this delicious you can simply open that comes pre-seasoned with salt water and consume instantly with no further cooking or prep required. The captivating ocean setting, donning my rubber overalls, surrounded by the men who bring oysters to the world, only amplifies the most incredible day out on the water. 

 From just outside the circle, Chris calls in Jansen, his nephew. A kid in his early teens with fiery red curly hair, freckles, and boyish good looks. If you were looking for a poster child to be the face of PEI oysters, Jansen summarizes the quintessential look of what an outsider might assume a kid on P.E.I looks like. Despite hauling thousands of these in and out of the water every day, this is going to be his first oyster experience. I can tell by contrasting opinions on board of Dylan's loogie reference and the jubilation on the face of Chris and I, Janson’s a bit torn about what to expect here.

Choking back more salt water than meat, his slurping skill was a bit clunky. Once he got it down I could see a look of deep intrigue on his face while he sorted around in his head to see if this was something he could relate more to as one of life's great pleasures or slimy snot. A few seconds later, when asked if he liked it; “I’ll eat it again, but it's not my favorite, that's for sure”.  Sounds to me like it's going to grow on him 🙂 

    Maybe you’ve dabbled in fresh oysters at a cocktail party, or stuck a toothpick into one soaked in grapeseed oil floating around a tin can between the meat and cheese section on the table at your Uncle's birthday. But to truly see, taste, and feel the most complete meal on the planet right next to where it was raised and handed to you by the man who oversaw its existence is like no gastronomic adventure I’ve ever had. The magic and simplicity of the Schooner Lane Oyster experience just off of Lennox Island is one of the top dining must-dos in the country, but getting a reservation might be harder than shucking them. 

Recipe

Schooner Lane Oceanside Oysters

• 6-12, 3” Schooner Lane Oyster
• Lemon, vinegar, tabasco sauce. *Optional
• Salt or crushed ice. *Optional to serve on

    Shuck the oyster by holding it in your hand, cupped side down, in a towel or with a glove on. Slide an oyster knife into the hinge side of the shell and twist the knife until the shell pops open. Then slide the knife back and forth to open the shell. Once open, slide the knife under the meat to release it from the shell. 

Optionally, you can add a dash of vinegar, a couple of drops of Tabasco, or a squeeze of lemon. Personally, if they are fresh from the ocean, the bit of salt water they come with is all the seasoning required. 

Serve on a bed of crushed ice, salt, or simply oceanside in rubber boots with friends.