Virginia Shaffer. (Photo by Greta Tucker)

In Virginia Shaffer’s food memoir, “Oyster Society: Adventures with the Shellfishly Motivated,” oysters are called many things — “time machines,” “happy little sea monks,” “knee-scrapping shipwreckers” and, perhaps most importantly, “a tiny message in a bottle.” 

From shucking competitions to oyster farms across the United States, Shaffer follows oysters to the people, places and histories from which they come. She sat down with the Portland Press Herald to talk oysters and the people who love them.

I was about five years into blogging about oysters, and there were a few key stories that, for some reason, I was withholding and I couldn’t figure out why — it felt like they were almost so important or life-changing for me. And I finally made this decision that perhaps a book about all of these people in the oyster industry was appropriate for what I was learning and what I was experiencing with them. 

Well, my initial interest was — you know — I loved oysters. I loved going to raw bars, and what intrigued me was, why do I get to know the oyster farmer’s name on some of these menus? I don’t know who caught the trout I’m eating, or the halibut, but I do get to know the oysters. That’s when I took a step back and thought, “I need to call up an oyster farmer and get to know them.” 

I got on my first oyster farm in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, in the middle of January, so I was completely untimely with my outreach. We were standing in the water. We were shucking oysters, and I felt just this primal feeling I hadn’t felt in a really long time. It was almost addicting. Eating oysters in the freezing cold, hands shaking — so evocative in a sense — that I decided I needed to continue up and down the coast meeting people. 

I am most interested in a coastal lifestyle and what people are doing with shellfish, and so it changed the way that I could connect on such a local level with the lifestyle I was drawn to. It also changed the way that I looked at a coastline, seeing it as a food source. Being on a beach and going, I can sustain myself — that feeling was new to me. It empowered me to see the landscape as a way of sustaining my own body versus just experiencing it as a peaceful place. 

I want everybody to come to us and feel like they can pull back the curtain on Maine seafood in a way that so many people during my travels and writing this book allowed me to do. When someone comes to see us, they really have two experiences they can choose from. One is sensory dining, which is all about storytelling. We work it just like a wine tasting. We have a story we’ve built around nature, sense of place, ecology, process, people and their passions, and then taste appreciation. So before they even eat that oyster, they have the full context of that animal, where it came from and the people behind it. It makes them love it so much more.

That’s one side of the business, and the other is more of that tactile, hands-on experience — more of an adventure — where they get to take the boat out, dump out a bunch of oysters and really see oysters in that magnitude. I want them to feel like I first felt on an oyster farm: totally in control, and totally excited about their natural environment again.

What I discovered through my obsession and love for eating shellfish was we could change the narrative on being consumers. When we look at sustainable aquaculture and, in particular, shellfish, the more we consume, the more farmers have the ability to put more of these animals in the water, which then helps support and protect more of our ecosystem. Oysters are a way to reframe your mind and say, as I eat this, I know I’m doing good for something else. I think that’s a big mindset shift.

As far as equity and diversity on the water, oysters have become a place where you no longer have to have this childhood or multigenerational family history to own a life on the water. You can be landlocked and from the Midwest, come to Maine, learn the ropes on a farm and start your own fairly quickly. I think this is a break from other fisheries that have barred a lot of people from entering. We see it in Maine with oysters creating more equity and more opportunity for young people to get out from all diverse backgrounds, and I just love that so much. It’s why it was so important in the book to differentiate this industry, and how progressive it really is.

Summer Wrobel is a writer living in Brooklyn, N.Y.

A book launch for “Oyster Society: Adventures with the Shellfishly Motivated” will be held at Lambs bar, 695 Broadway, South Portland, 6-8 p.m. Aug. 10. The event is free with registration at islandportpress.com, catered with complimentary oysters by the Lady Oyster team.