(Funny) facts to know about Oysters

(Funny) facts to know about Oysters

DID YOU KNOW ?

Oysters are at their best from September to April?

In the period in between, the oysters 'milk': they produce seeds or eggs and are then left alone for reproduction. When that period is over, somewhere in September, it is celebrated with the opening of the oyster season: oysters can then be eaten again!

The oysters are cultivated on oyster beds, which are made from mussel shells?

The larvae attach themselves to the mussel shells, previously roof tiles with a lime layer were used. The oysters grow up in the tide and feed on algae, when they are big enough they go to the oyster pits and there they are rinsed with clean seawater.

The Zeeland Platte Oysters take three to four years before they are suitable to eat?

An oyster is a chunk of health? Oysters contain a lot of Omega-3 fatty acids and hardly any cholesterol. Are a source of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, C and D and contain iron, magnesium, zinc, calcium and folic acid.

Do oysters help with a cold and prevent a hangover?

You are also at the right place for weight loss. A 120 gram serving of oyster meat contains only 80 calories and 2 grams of fat.

Oyster farming is thousands of years old?

The very first oysters were farmed in China. And already in the year one hundred BC, the Roman Sergius Orata introduced the cultivation of oysters in Europe. He took oyster larvae from China and put them on rocks in the sea to grow into table oysters. The Romans also imported wild oysters from France, Scotland and the Byzantine Empire.

The Dutch government checks the quality of the oysters and the water on the farming plots from 1906?

That happened after the demand for oysters fell sharply around 1885 due to deaths from contaminated oysters. It helped; from 1911, exports rose again.

Eighty percent of the oysters in Zeeland were lost in the harsh winter of 1963?

It then froze for three months in a row and all cultivation plots were covered by ice. The flat oysters could not withstand that.

That is why the Zeeland creuse was introduced to Zeeland from Japan in the late 1960s?

The creuse is therefore also called the Japanese oyster. To indicate the difference with the flat oyster, people also call it hollow or bulbous oyster. So you have the one and only Zeeland flat, and the hollow, convex, Japanese Zeeland creuse. But it is now really Zeeland, because the Zeeland growers have developed their own breeding methods and the Pacific oyster has completely adapted to the Oosterschelde. So they are now real Zeeland oysters.

As a result of the cold winter of 1963, in combination with the decision to dam the Oosterschelde, 160 oyster farmers from Zeeland stopped their business, handed in their oyster plots and started doing other work.

Do they prefer fried oysters in Korea?

Zeeland is a relatively small player in the oyster market from an international perspective? Every year, about 30 million pieces of oysters are cultivated by all growers together in a good year. In France there are about 1.5 million in good years and in Japan more than 157,000 tons.. how many pieces there are can no longer be counted….

The Zeeland creuse is an ideal oyster to grow?

They reproduce when they are one year old and grow very fast. After two years, the creuse weighs about 100 grams (without shell), and is then suitable for consumption. This takes much longer with the flat oyster: a flat oyster only weighs about 75 grams after four years.

Are oysters grown very sustainably?

Oyster farmers do not add anything to their product. An oyster is taken out of the water in this way and ends up completely pure on the plate. Oysters use plankton as a food source and thus provide beautifully clear water, the sunlight does the rest!

The oyster farmers never give up and always keep innovating?

Now that they have to contend with the oyster borer, a shellfish that drills a hole in young oysters and sucks them empty, causing them to die, they come up with new creative solutions. Such as the cultivation of oysters on tables and in baskets

Back to blog