We sell seashells.
By the seashore.
Black Shield Oyster Company is a chef-driven, sustainable aquaculture project coming out of more than 40 years of restaurant experience. Our goal has always been to create a table-ready product while leaving the world quantifiably better than we found it.
We grow our Doubloons, those world famous pacific oysters, using a low-impact bag-on-bottom tumble method. This allows the shells to turn twice a day with the tide, while still allowing the oysters to build up a natural resilience that means they last longer in cold storage after receiving. This hybrid method yields a smoothed shell, a plump sweet belly and provides the fantastic flavor that everyone associates with Hood Canal farms.
Our beach-grown oysters, Basalt Points, are hand harvested at low tide and display a beautiful shell color along with excellent merroir. They shuck well and grill up easily.
We reject the shells we wouldn’t want to receive, giving them back to the rocky shoreline, where they will continue to do the heavy lifting on the farm - each little bivalve filtering 50 gallons of water a day, and creating a strong summer set to provide for the future crops and diets of our inter-tidal critters and customers alike.
BSOC is located in a private and pastoral cove on the western shores of the Hood Canal. Protected by towering trees and a basalt jetty, the glacial waters that nourish our shellfish come straight through these forested hills to our farm, which feeds directly into the waters of the Canal and even beyond into the greater Salish Sea.
Situated halfway down the fjord and a few miles outside of the closest
no-stoplight town, Black Shield Oysters is barely a blip on the map. And we like it that way.
Shellfish Available for Delivery:
Beach Grown Basalt Points - all sizes
Tumbled Doubloons
Pirate’s Gold Manila Clams
(available in limited quantities to select accounts,
please reach out if you are interested in learning more)