Not to worry, there are still lots of these beauties around.
Jean-Pierre Muller/AFP/Getty Images hide caption
toggle caption Jean-Pierre Muller/AFP/Getty ImagesNot to worry, there are still lots of these beauties around.
Jean-Pierre Muller/AFP/Getty ImagesScreaming headlines this week threatened of a wild oyster " apocalypse" and told foodies to eat upbefore these precious bivalves become extinct. That's because a report published in BioSciencesays 85 percent of wild oyster reefs are gone.
But Julie Qiu, who writes an all-things-oyster blog called In A Half Shell, says, "Stop panicking and get the facts."
Facts like this one: 95 percent of the oysters we slurp up at fancy restaurants and roadside shacks alike are farmed, not wild, according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. So you're not likely to see a big change on your plate anytime soon.
Now, we're not quibbling with the environmental health facts about native oyster reef depletion. These reefs serve as barriersto land erosion, and the oysters themselves help filter and purify seawater, so less of them is bad.
"The [BioScience] report was really great about the environmental conditions of oysters today, but it didn't make the connection to the way we eat," Qiu tells Shots. And that led a lot of people to jump to conclusions, she says.
Wild oyster reef depletion is sad but old news. The Climatideblog reports that this data's been out for over a year. And we've done a dozen pieces already on the problems and restoration efforts underway in recent years, including this oneabout the depletion of oysters on the West Coast in 2008.
We'll no doubt do more stories on this, not to mention continue to keep tabs on oyster-related recalls, the status of the oyster business, and oyster safetyin the aftermath of the Gulf oil spill.
As NPR science correspondent (and King of Puns) Richard Harrisputs it, we need to say "Oyster-la-vista" to the hype about the vanishing oyster supply.