The Living Shore: Rediscovering a Lost World

by Rowan Jacobsen

In the 1990s, a marine scientist named Brian Kingzett was commissioned to survey Canada's western coast. He saw amazing sights, from the wildest, most breathtaking coasts to the smallest of marine creatures. Along the western side of Vancouver Island, Kingzett nosed into an isolated pocket beach where he found something unusual. Amid the mussels, barnacles, and clams were round oysters―Olympias. Kingzett noted their presence and paddled on. A decade later when he met Betsy Peabody, executive director of the Puget Sound Restoration Fund (PSRF), he learned that this once ubiquitous native oyster was in steep decline, and he knew that together they would return to this remote spot.

Rowan Jacobsen, along with Kingzett, Peabody, and a small group of scientists from PSRF and the Nature Conservancy, set out last July to see if the Olys were still surviving―and if they were, what they could learn from them. The goal: to use their pristine natural beds, which have probably been around for millennia, as blueprints for the habitat restoration efforts in Puget Sound. The implications are vast. If Peabody and her team can bring good health back to Puget Sound by restoring the intertidal zones―the areas of land exposed during low tide and submerged during high tide, where oysters live―their research could serve as a model for saving the world's oceans.

During a time when the fate of the oceans seems uncertain, Rowan Jacobsen has found hope in the form of a small shelled creature living in the lost world where all life began.

Genres: Nonfiction, Nature, History, Science, Environment, Food, Biology

176 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2009

About the author

Rowan Jacobsen is the James Beard Award-winning author of A Geography of Oysters: The Connoisseur’s Guide to Oyster Eating in North America, Fruitless Fall: The Collapse of the Honey Bee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis, and The Living Shore, about our ancient connection to estuaries and their potential to heal the oceans. He has written for the New York Times, Newsweek, Harper’s, Outside, Eating Well, Forbes, Popular Science, and others, and his work has been anthologized in The Best American Science and Nature Writing and Best Food Writing collections. Whether visiting endangered oystermen in Louisiana or cacao-gathering tribes in the Bolivian Amazon, his subject is how to maintain a sense of place in a world of increasing placelessness. His 2010 book, American Terroir, was named one of the Top Ten Books of the Year by Library Journal. His newest, Shadows on the Gulf: A Journey Through Our Last Great Wetland, was released in 2011. His Outside Magazine piece “Heart of Dark Chocolate” received the 2011 Lowell Thomas Award from the Society of American Travel Writers for best adventure story of the year. He is a 2012 Alicia Patterson Foundation fellow, writing about endangered diversity on the borderlands between India, Myanmar, and China.

Reviews

[Mike Durkin]

Science textbooks need to be written with the color and engagement of Rowan Jacobsen’s The Living Shore — a brief chronicle of a marine expedition along the coast of British Columbia in search of the nearly extinct Olympia oyster.

The Living Shore is a well-crafted account of passionate research into shellfish aquaculture and its role in not only the preservation, but restoration of species.

If this a food book? Not exactly, but any oyster or shellfish lover will appreciate the close-to-nature storylines and rich marine descriptions that always seem to accompany shellfish.

Jacobsen gets his feet wet, literally, is helping a team of field researchers with their survey of oyster beds to better understand the Oly oyster population.

In the end, The Living Shore provides a good understanding of how native oyster populations were depleted right along with gold rush, how native populations (whether they knew it or not) practiced precise sustainability and how several groups and individuals are working to ensure a perfect and powerful food and animal can live on for generations.

[Jedidiah Esposito · Rating 5 out of 5]

In as few words as possible, this guy can write.

Far from my typical reading fare, I decided to give this book on oysters a go in the hopes of connecting a little more with my new surroundings in the Pacific Northwest.

I was dubious that it'd hold my attention as I'm not a very conservation-minded fellow and have only recently enjoyed a diverse range of seafood.

Thankfully, Rowan Jacobsen isn't just a scientist. He tells the story of the Olympia Oyster over great spans of history with vivid description and genuine interest, all without the verbosity and political bent one might expect from a modern day scientist.

I'm left with a feeling of connection to this place and a desire to know more. I totally recommend it.

[Kim Denise · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I could give this book ten stars. A gorgeous marriage of graceful prose with science and adventure, suffused with reverence for the natural world and a piercing sadness for the changes we have wrought in it. But also hope. I keep coming back to the hope.

I don't really enjoy writing reviews but I feel obligated to say something about a book like this. Read it!!

[Meredith Henning · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was such a great book, I can't wait for Violet and my dh to read it next. Loved it!!

H/T: This blog post from Lissa: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bonnyg...

[Jeffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

The thing I like best about The Living Shore is its ability to contain multitudes in its brevity. It begins as an exploration of the Olympia Oyster. Once bedded in many locations from Alaska to the San Francisco Bay, the Oly, as it is affectionately called, can now be found in large beds in only a few locations. Beset by the massive environmental changes of the anthropoid era, silting, over harvesting, fertilizers and urbanization, the poor oly must struggle for existence.
It is this struggle seeds this environmental adventure story; the search for a place where the Oly still thrives, which turns out to be on the north end of Vancouver Island in an inconspicuous inlet. Jacobsen tells this part of the story well enough, but soon branches into the fascinating fact that Native Americans of the Northwest Coast also created clam beds. Though they were different than the fish traps--the clam beds had a reef of rocks piled along the edge of a beach that worked to give an ideal environment for clam digging, while the fish traps were a reef of rocks piled in front of a stream to catch salmon, which would swim in on the high tide and become trapped--both were brilliant environmental responses to the need to harvest the proteins on hand.
The book then moves from these specifics to explaining the migration of Native Americans over Beringia, and how people headed down the temperate coast--which at the time was was more than a hundred feet shallower, and thus allow travel along the coast in places no one can now go. He goes on to explain the importance of omega 3 and iodine, and how having a diet heavy in fish and seafood can actually help prevent depression. I mentioned this to my wife and she reminded me that Iceland is call a "cold spot" not because of the weather, but because depression affects the society so little.
He leaves us with a bit of hope, mentioning that Olys have re-established themselves in the north part of San Francisco Bay, which leads into a review of efforts to re-establish oyster populations around the United States where they have been overexploited, which to be honest is everywhere they grow.
This is the sort of book that should have been written by someone from the Northwest rather than a man from Vermont. I can't help but feel that more could have been said by a more gifted writer about a region I have an intimate connection to as I was a commercial fisherman in Southeast Alaska for 14 years. Nevertheless, it is a readable and valuable edition to the often ignored inter-tidal area, and if you are a fan of the environment of the Pacific Northwest, it is a readable introduction to this.

[Kate Laboda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I mean, of course I loved this book! I love Olympia oysters! But also my mind is blown because I had no idea the deep and intrinsic and biological connection humans have to shellfish and the shore!? We are how we are because some desperate early humans decided to eat shellfish? I am left in awe of the place I live, so grateful to have access to good clean seafood (and excited to eat so much more of it), and jazzed about conservation and doing some good work to protect this vital species and the ecosystem that makes us human. Literally. You should just read the book.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting ecology book.

[Evelyn Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this last year, how could I have forgotten to include it in the challenge?

[Rebecca Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome.

[Jonathan Kleefeld]

I'm a sucker for compact books that expertly dollop a subject on my brain. Never mind that this particular book presses a good deal of my personal excitement buttons: Oysters themselves, historical ecology, food writing, the Pacific Northwest. The final anthropological/bio-neurological chapters are especially fascinating and expansive to the book's mission. The overall execution here is superb. Jacobsen is fast becoming a favorite for his angle and style.

[Tuck · Rating 5 out of 5]

this natural history of the oyster, the oly, is really good, and author has nice chapter on pre-historic human development and migrations, and some other examples of shore restoration, in Chesapeake (pretty much over there unfortunately, till we stop polluting), and gulf coast, besides concentrating on Puget sound and Vancouver is. bc. everybody should read this just to get the news.

[Melody · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this slender volume. It's got adventure, prehistory, First Nations, and more, all wrapped around the delicious oyster. Absolutely fascinating and at the same time sobering. There's so much that we thought we knew that was wrong regarding how the coasts were settled that this volume refutes, and there's so much left to learn. Highly recommended for Left Coasters.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a small book for such a big message. I learned a tremendous amount about the evolution of mankind and also about the importance of creatures - namely oysters - along our shores. Jacobsen is a master storyteller and science journalist. Fantastic book.

[Kerith · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book and extremely interesting as a British Columbian to learn more about the history of this area. It makes me want to take long walks on the beach, eat oysters, and donate money to reconstruct the ecosystems of our intertidal zones.

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

great history of Puget Sound marine ecology written in a very accessible way with information about the history of the people and biology of the region, current problems and potential solutions with an eye toward several similar regions. Very engaging, informative and actionable.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know if I should read more books about nature or fewer, but I always walk away from them thinking about how terrible humans generally are at keeping the only planet they've got going. It makes me sad. Good book, though.

[Flora · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brief, educational, delightful and all about nature.

[Cyndi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written and interesting!

[Angela Boord · Rating 3 out of 5]

As he says in the Acknowledgments, this is a "nice, little book". Made me miss the Pacific Northwest.

[Marina · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little gem on the natural history of Olympia oysters in the Pacific Northwest. A quick, interesting read.