Some think oil killed the oysters, others that dispersant used to bead and sink the oil did it.Īfter the spill and in advance of tar balls washing up, the oystermen petitioned the state to open the oyster beds. In 2010, almost 5 million barrels flooded the Gulf of Mexico when the BP Deepwater Horizon exploded. Whether the court sides with Florida or Georgia, any decision will likely result in more litigation. This, Florida is still arguing, has caused Apalachicola Bay to become saltier and saltier, allowing predators to camp out in the estuary’s buffet. Florida said Georgia was using too much water, leaving too little for Florida. In 2013, Florida sued Georgia in the U.S. Only a handful of oyster houses and seafood markets remain on Water Street where it meets the Apalachicola River on the working waterfront of Apalachicola.įor almost 30 years, a legal battle has raged over water usage.
He motored into the waters of the next county, where such things are allowed, and began experimenting with technology that could leave four generations of Ward family oystering obsolete. When the bay and his family were all but destroyed, he came back.Īnd then T.J. was a young man, he left his family’s 13 Mile Oyster House, sustained for four generations by the daily miracles of Apalachicola Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, to try to make something different of himself in college. They were so plentiful then, he’d sit on the tailgate and eat a pile, scooping out the meat fresh from the bay, the shells falling like peanuts at a ball game. When he was a teen, his summer job was washing oysters. No one ever named a boat for you unless you were old or dead. When he was 10, his grandfather named a boat after him. It was pictures of boats, netting and rigging just so. The seaman’s single clap would cut through the salt air on the docks of Apalachicola louder than words could. Ward was born the year after his grandfather had the throat cancer surgery.
In a place where everybody’s livelihood is yoked to the water, you have to follow the shells.
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