WELLFLEET — The season opened for commercial shellfishing permit holders on March 15, and the next day, a partly sunny, mild Saturday, a dozen or so wild pickers waded and floated their way to Great Island, pails and rakes in hand, to harvest their first oysters of the year.
While the pickings of regulation three-inch oysters appeared to be a little slimmer than last year’s bumper crop, it’s too early to tell on day one what the season will bring, said Nancy O’Connell, whose husband, Jim, is a longtime shellfish farmer. Nancy heads the Wellfleet Oyster Alliance, the newly renamed nonprofit (formerly SPAT) that organizes the town’s annual OysterFest.
Farmers who weren’t out wild-picking were just as busy, hauling racks and bags back to their grants from the cold, high-humidity cellars where most overwinter their dormant oysters. Their work now is to get seed and young oysters into the water, where they can resume their growth and eventually find their way into restaurants and raw bars.
