Pin Drop: Apalachicola

The town's old oyster soul remains—but for how long?

An Apalachicola oyster tonger in 2009. Photo copyright David Hanson.

I’m not sure I’ve ever had an Apalachicola oyster. And for someone like me—an oyster-lover and a sometime food writer—once that would have been possible only by concerted avoidance.

Historian Jack Davis describes how sometimes out on Apalachicola Bay, you once could have heard the click of the oyster shells, the small motions of their opening and closing amplified through the bottom of a boat. Oyster eating here goes back thousands of years; by the late nineteenth century, at least one oyster-eating traveler declared that the local oyster beds produced the best-tasting bivalves on the Gulf of Mexico.

Eventually, it became a major industry. Forty years ago, you could find hundreds of skiffs anchored in or near the bay—“at Cat Point, Indian Pass Lagoon, Dry Bar, Hagan’s Flats, 11 Mile, and Nick’s Hole,” as my friend David Hanson wrote in a story for the Bitter Southerner in 2022, which was a finalist a James Beard Award for feature writing.

Shucking at Indian Pass Raw Bar. Photo copyright Michael Hanson.

Apalachicola feels different than other coastal Florida towns. That'’s visible in the architecture, even. There is a kind of ticky-tacky raised cottage that bespeaks beach, as a platonic ideal, more than any kind of locality. Drive a little further west along the “Forgotten Coast”—so called because it’s the least developed stretch of Florida—and you’ll find plenty such cottages. But here in Apalach, the buildings are often old-timey brick behemoths.

Part of this is due to geography: downtown focuses not on the beach, but on the last few miles of Apalach’s namesake river. The closest place to lay in the sand is a dozen miles away, across a bridge, out on a barrier island. Highway 98 makes a sharp bend here, slowing traffic, dragging every driver right through downtown.

From MacKenzie, “History of Oystering in the United States and Canada…,” 1996.

That visit to Apalachicola spawned a theory: There are two kinds of fishing towns, commercial and recreational.

If you’re not of this world, you might think, Hey, isn’t fishing just fishing? But, no: there’s bad blood here. Many recreational fishermen worry that the commercial guys are rapacious, hoovering up whatever fish they can for profit. I’ll let a retired commercial fisherman I interviewed for a forthcoming story speak for the other side: Anglers are “just tourists,” he says—they show up for a bit of a good time and then head on home.

I have, lately, thanks to a handful of assignments, stumbled into the world of recreational fishing. It’s a fine hobby, but like any hobby, it can get a bit slick around its edges: There’s a lot of branding, a lot of fancy sunglasses.

Perhaps that’s why I’ve always found more romance in the world of commercial fisheries. There’s something cowboyish, in a way. “No one ever got rich oystering, but few independent fishers dreamed of going to work for a company boss,” as Jack Davis writes, describing Apalachicola, “and no factory floor or big-windowed office could beat the workplace ambiance of the bay.”

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The title of David’s essay is elegiac: “The Last Oyster Tongers of Apalachicola.” That’s a reference to the fact that in 2020, due to declining populations, the state closed the bay to harvest. The cause of that decline is tangled and not fully known.

So how long can Apalachicola keep a whiff of its old ambiance?

As David points out, when it comes to the local menus, the bay’s closure has brought little change: “People have come here for oysters, so oysters will be served, even if they are from Louisiana, Texas, and Florida bays farther east.” When I visited Apalachicola in February and asked where the oysters hailed from, if my servers knew anything, they tended to offer just the name of a state.

The end of the Apalachicola River. Photo copyright Michael Hanson.

I struck up a conversation with a cashier in town, and she told me about a different threat to the town’s identity: An equity firm has bought up much of the local real estate. I’m paraphrasing here, but she made it sound like a kind of mining: taking the soul of the place, packaging it for tourists, selling expensive hotel rooms and fancy steaks, until there’s no soul left. She was particularly incensed that some fancy sportfishing magazine had praised the quality local tripletail. The boat ramp had turned mobbed. As she explained it all, she began to cry. She begged me, in essence, not to write an essay like this one: She did not want any more attention coming to her town.

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🦪 The science and history of oysters

My friends over at Gastropod just released a new episode all about oysters, and the difference they could make on threatened coastlines. I’m featured in the episode, talking a bit about our local oyster geography in Louisiana.

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If you go

Don’t! Find your own commercial fishing town.

I kid, though of course I also encourage you to travel responsibly and thoughtfully. At least read this essay en route.

As for those out-of-town oysters, my favorite vibe in Apalach is the Hole in the Wall Raw Bar. But a better way to support the local fishing economy is to pick up the local catch at 13 Mile Seafood. (No kitchen? Just get one of the dips.)

Be sure to stop by Downtown Books & Purl, which offers a fine selection of nature-related books, and then cross the river to sip beers while overlooking the water at Eastpoint Beer Company (the pizza is tasty, too).

Indian Pass Raw Bar, just east of town, is another worthwhile stop. Once you’re there, catch a boat taxi—or slip a kayak into the water—and cross Indian Pass to St. Vincent, a lovely wildlife refuge that is home to young red wolves. Then, back on land, head up to Cape San Blas for a walk at Stumphole, a beach punctuated by the decaying remnants of old trees.