Malpeque Bay Oysters

Samantha Noye, a sixth generation oyster farmer, sorts select and choice Malpeque oysters for 'decontamination' in East Bideford, Prince Edward Island, Canada. Oysters farmed from inland waters are required to decontaminate in the bay for 14 tide cycles prior to shipping and sale.
Leslie Hardy, patriarch of the Hardy Family and owner of Leslie Hardy and Sons Oysters, displays a handful of yearling Malpeque oysters drying on the lawn of his home in East Bideford, Prince Edward Island, Canada. The Hardy's grow yearling oysters in bags that float in the bay, but those bags are still susceptible to mussels and starfish that prevent the proper flow of water to the oysters. Drying the bags for three days in the sun kills the predators and stresses the oysters, that grow even more vigorously when returned to the water. Each bag holds approximately 100 oysters.
An oyster fisherman 'tongs' for oysters in the Grand River off of Malpeque Bay, in Grand River, Prince Edward Island, Canada. 'Tonging' is the traditional method for harvesting oysters from the river bottom.
Cecil Banks hand sorts oysters as they pass on a conveyor belt washer in East Bideford, Prince Edward Island, Canada.
Hardy family patriarch Leslie Hardy washes his face in the oyster rinse water in the small oyster sorting shed of Leslie Hardy and Son's Oysters in East Bideford, Prince Edward Island, Canada. Hardy, his children and grandchildren grow and harvest Malpeque oysters in the lot of water that has been in his family for six generations.

Leslie Hardy, never one to shy away from hard work, sets out for the water at sunrise each morning to check on his hundreds of lobster traps. He returns in the mid afternoon to his oyster farm, helping his children and grandchildren tend to the tens of thousands of oysters in the bay his home overlooks.

Fishing oysters and lobsters is hardwired into the Hardy bloodline. His father, brothers, four sons and one of his daughters are hooked on the family business, established over four generations on Lennox Bay in East Bideford, Prince Edward Island. Along with Leslie’s sons, many of his 36 grandchildren are involved in the farming of Malpeque oysters, some of the most sought after PEI oysters.

“My father passed the farm onto my older brother, but after a while he wasn’t interested in it anymore so I bought it from him,” recalled Hardy. “I was a school teacher once, and so was Shirley [his wife] but I gave it all up for this, the adventure of being on the water, the freedom of doing my own thing.”

In this age of automation and mechanically-processed foods, oysters are still a hands-on operation (albeit gloved hands). For the Hardy family, gone is the day of “tonging,” a method of scooping oysters from the bay floor with a hand-operated dredging basket. Instead, the Hardys sort each and every oyster by hand.

They also have developed a method for raising higher-quality oysters in less time. The traditional ready-for-market oyster matures at seven years, but the Hardys can grow them to full size in three years and with a rounder shape, which is an attractive quality for raw bars. Their oysters are shipped all over North America, from PEI to Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, Boston, Montreal, and Maryland.

Gordon is the youngest of Leslie’s eight grown children who, in addition to being an integral part of the oyster business, also farms mussels on the other side of the bridge that divides the bay.

“On this side we kill the mussels and grow them on the other,” explains Gordon. Talking about his life, “[I] never did anything else; only made it to the tenth grade, but I like [farming oysters]. Some folk round here go out west, Alberta ways, working [for] oil. I wouldn’t want to be that far from home. This is where I want to be, with my family.”

For the Hardys, it is all about family and the labor of love that is making a living on the water.