Dispatch from Eastpoint: Requiem for an oyster and a way of life
By Richard Bickel Guest Columnist
(Editor’s note: this article originally appeared earlier this month in The Tallahassee Democrat)
There is, perhaps, no town in America that so profoundly reveals the human toll from a loss of a fishery than Eastpoint.
Perched on the edge of Apalachicola Bay, whose waters once provided 90 percent of Florida’s annual oyster harvest and 10 percent of the nation’s, tiny Eastpoint, population 2,000, is literally built on a foundation of oyster shells. Indeed, dig anywhere along the town wharf where fish houses have for over a century shucked and packed literally tons of the bivalves, shipping them to lands far and wide, and your shovel will hit nothing but oyster shells from five to 10 feet down.
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