You’d get no argument from the customers at Little Creek, where oyster farmers bring their bounty right through the front door. In fact, that’s how I met Matt Ketcham of Ketcham’s Seafarm in Great Peconic Bay. His signature Peconic Gold oysters, a house favorite at Little Creek, are delicately briny and on the petite side, making them a terrific cocktail oyster. Their strong shells and clearly defined hinges, physical characteristics that make them easier to shuck, are achieved by frequent shaking in a cylindrical machine called a tumbler. “He represents the new approach to growing oysters,” said Wile. “He grows for a specific size and shape.”
Ketcham’s love of the water was triggered at age 8 or 9. “My dad took me flounder fishing for my birthday,” said Ketcham, who now lives in Southold. “Later I worked in a tackle shop and on fishing boats, and then got my captain’s license.” Originally from Patchogue, he’s a graduate of the aquaculture and fisheries technology program at the University of Rhode Island and, like Wile, is one of Suffolk County’s first aquaculture leaseholders.
“I phased into oyster farming and am constantly reinvesting,” Ketcham said. He relies on a U-Fab pontoon boat with pulling gear, a Carolina Skiff, and his partner, Thomas Cassidy, a retired NYPD detective, to work his lease parcel as efficiently and sustainably as possible. His site is sheltered and shallow, he explained. This year, the water is so clear you can see eight feet down, he added, although you can’t see what’s going on until you winch the oyster cages on deck. That’s where the oysters, which are always growing at different rates, are tumbled, hand-sorted by size and either harvested or returned to the water to continue growing.
Ketcham, like a number of other oyster farmers, gets the bulk of his oyster seed, or spat, from Karen Rivara, a marine biologist who has been breeding and growing oysters for 30 years. In 2000 she formed the Noank Aquaculture Cooperative with eight other shellfish growers. From bases in Southold and near the mouth of the Mystic River in Connecticut, she works both sides of Long Island Sound.