September 25, 2024 — Day after day, the piles of shucked shells slowly become tiny mountains behind Bluffton Oyster Co., a gray clapboard shack where a crew of fast hands pries away at oysters and crabs, a bounty bound for local markets and eateries.
In many ways, Bluffton’s May River waterfront here is a throwback to bygone days when local fishermen and fish houses provided most of America’s seafood. Now, like a pearl inside an oyster, the smooth, shiny prospect of renewal – of sustainability and food self-sufficiency – awaits discovery.
Helming the charge for renewal is Bluffton, South Carolina’s new Mayor Larry Toomer, the oyster shack’s owner, who sees as his mandate preserving and linking a working waterfront to the region’s growing suburbs. Why does this gambit matter beyond America’s Low Country? Because the seafood unloaded here plays a crucial role in the nation’s health and security, Mayor Toomer says.
“I used to think nuclear war was our biggest threat,” he says. “Now I think it’s our ability to feed ourselves if something goes wrong.”
Aside from coastal recreational opportunities, Americans have become largely disconnected from the ocean’s riches. In fact, the United States is the world’s second-biggest commercial fishery. But the White House National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health doesn’t even mention seafood as an asset.
Experts say that “blue food” isn’t a part of a broader conversation about America’s food security or food system transformation largely because of a common public perception that fish, oysters, and shrimp are a luxury, not a necessity. At the same time, the gap between fish catchers and fish eaters – no more “my neighbor is a shrimper” – has widened.
The challenge, says Mayor Toomer, is a sense among local fishers that “we’ve basically been left to die” even as seafood consumption has risen from 12 pounds to 20 pounds per capita in the past 30 years.