These cages contain
more than 30 million oysters.
They are grown here, at one of the largest
oyster farms on the East Coast.
But these little guys are hard to cultivate.
They need constant care,
or else an entire crop can get wiped out.
It's kind of a good mixture of science and heavy labor.
So it's hard work, long hours.
It's seven days a week.
And the work doesn't stop there.
After the oysters are harvested,
it's a race against time to get them safely to consumers.
We went inside Ward Oyster Company
to see how it harvests 3.5 million oysters every year,
bringing them from algae tanks to your plate.
This is John Vigliotta.
He began his career on the water when he was 13 years old.
I started putting oysters in cages in 1995.
This aquaculture farm sprawls over 884 acres —
the size of over 147 Roman Colosseums.
It includes a hatchery, nursery,
and part of Virginia's Mobjack Bay.
Farming an oyster begins in the hatchery.
Here, biologist Chris Smith puts 3,000 adult oysters
into a shallow tank called a spawning table.
Then, he artificially creates the conditions
that cause oysters to spawn.
We're controlling the temperature in the tank
specifically. It's the all-you-can-eat buffet
getting them ready to spawn.
When the oysters spawn,
they release their eggs and sperm directly into the water.
The eggs and sperm are put into tanks,
where they turn into oyster larvae.
One billion oyster babies
are produced in these tanks every year.
They remain there for about three weeks,
feeding on algae and growing shells.
We grow about seven different species of algae
to create a menu for our oysters and clams.
It's amazing to see the algae kind of bloom,
and then to watch the oysters
and clams grow in our facility,
it's very gratifying.
When the oysters get to be
about a quarter inch long,
they're placed outside in upweller tanks.
And it's a system in which allows
a large quantity of water to be flown past the oysters,
giving them a super abundant amount of food.
After about two months of feeding,
staff check on the size of the oysters.
We'll take these oysters here that are larger,
and they'll go in a cage to go overboard.
And then these oysters here
will go back into the system for further grow-out,
to where they can get to be this size
and eventually go in a cage.
The cages full of oysters
are then tossed into the Mobjack Bay.
We have about 2,500 to 3,000 cages.
Contained in all the cages
that we have out in the Mobjack Bay,
you probably have somewhere around 30 million oysters.
That is a lot of oysters.
If all of them were harvested at once
and put into your freezer,
you could eat over 800 oysters every day for 100 years,
and you would still have leftovers.
Nicely done.
Farmers monitor the weather closely.
Excessive rainfall can dilute the salt in the water,
which could kill the oysters.
And water temperature is also a factor.
Oysters grow best between
60 degrees Fahrenheit and 80 degrees.
If you go above that,
it just gets so hot that they will stop growing
or slow down significantly.
If it goes below that, they go dormant.
If all goes well,
after six months, the cages are removed from the water
and the oysters are brought to a separator.
This machine sorts them by size.
If they are not big enough to sell,
they go back in the water.
Oysters can take around one to two years
to go from hatchery to market.
After separation, market-sized oysters are washed,
tagged with order information, and boxed.
Once the oysters come out of the bay,
the clock starts ticking.
The team has to harvest the oysters,
transport them to the shop,
add ice, package them,
and place them in the cooler
within two hours to meet FDA guidelines.
The boxes are put into a refrigerated truck
and shipped to distributors across the US,
who pay around 40 cents per oyster.
In Virginia, wild-caught oysters
actually sell for less, around 30 cents.
We probably sell our market oysters
to 10 or 15 different states in the country,
but our oysters end up everywhere.
And occasionally, for local orders,
John delivers himself.
And then you have the tag here.
All right, thank you very much.
OK.
Customers say that they're fresh, they're delicious.
Since 1996, they've gone from farming
100,000 oysters per year to 3.5 million in 2019.
Besides selling oysters to eat,
the company also sells
around 70 million baby oysters each year
to farmers up and down the East Coast.
Aquaculture is one of the fastest growing
food production sectors in the world.
While the amount of seafood caught in the wild
has not increased by much since the 1980s,
demand is up nearly 150%.
Aquaculture is filling the gap.
It is predicted that by 2030,
60% of the fish available for human consumption
will come from aquaculture.
Virginia has made a big bet
and doubled down on farming oysters.
Today, the state is the largest
oyster producer on the East Coast.
But the pandemic has hurt business.
Like no natural disaster that we've ever had.
Oysters' market value,
and restaurant orders, plummeted.
So we're getting hit both with reduced orders
and a reduced price for the product that we do sell.
And on top of that, after a stellar 2019,
John stocked the bay, hoping for an abundant future.
We have a record amount of product in the water,
and our sales are off almost 50%.
While 2020 was a roller coaster ride
for Ward Oyster Company,
sales have finally started to pick up.
John is optimistic about the future.
No matter what happens,
he plans to be on the water.
I love being out on the water.
My office is on the water.
You can't get it much better than that,
and saltwater is in my veins.