Ostrea Edulis Oysters
Traditional Methods
Alf Smythers
Mylor Harbour
Secure Shop
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Dispatch & Delivery
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Your Cornish Native Oysters are naturally harvested on the Port of Truro Oyster & Mussel Fishery, gathered by hand hauling traditional small dredges onboard the Alf Smythers and oyster punts Badger & Peter Mayes, graded to perfection by eye, purified in an approved environment, packaged personally by the crew, ordered by phone or online, delivered to you by reliable fish merchants in chilled packaging.

Alf Smythers
Artwork: Ranger
Alf Smythers TO17

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Cornish Native Oysters or 'Fal Oysters' are thought to have been found since the earliest trading with the Phoenicians, and were widely grown around the coast when the Romans occupied Britain. For hundreds of years they were seen as a food for the poor who would gather the plankton-feeding bivalves from the muddy banks of creeks and rivers at low tide. In 1298 they sold for 2d (less than 1p) a gallon and were cheap in comparison with other fish.

By the time Sir Richard Carew published the Survey of Cornwall in 1602, oysters were being caught using dredges “a thick strong net fastened to three spills of iron, and drawn to the boat’s stern, gathering whatsoever it meeteth lying in the bottom of the water, out of which, when it is taken up, they cull the oyster and cast away the residue, which they term gard, and serveth as a bed for the oysters to breed in.” In Carew’s time oysters were abundant around the Cornish shoreline, now they are only found in the Fal, Percuil, Helford, Fowey and Camel rivers; the Fal has the last wild oyster beds, in the other rivers both native and Pacific oysters are re-laid and farmed. The Cornish Native Oysters are slow maturing, taking up to five years to grow to a marketable size, and is thought to have a far superior flavour to the faster growing Pacific oysters (crassostrea gigas also sometimes known as rock oysters).
http://www.england-in-particular.info/goods/g-case4-04.html