Jules Opton-Himmel and team ran an oyster farm, launched a home delivery shellfish business and opened the Walrus and Carpenter Oyster Bar and Farmstand in the middle of a pandemic.
Not every farmer would have the drive and skills to do all of this at the same time, but when the oyster farmer saw his sales to restaurants plummet during the COVID-19 shutdown, he knew he had to do something to move his product quickly. In March and April, the bivalves were rapidly growing inside cages below the surface in Ninigret Pond in Charlestown and Dutch Harbor in Jamestown, and if he didn’t clear them out, there’d be no room for the next batch of seed to grow the next generation of oysters.
