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🦪 These are natural, real oyster shells! 🦪 Slightly curved as pictured. 🦪 Can be used for baking after thoroughly washing. 🦪 Can be used for wedding decorations for name placeholders. 🦪 Can be used to create DIY crafts!


🦪 Oysters are harvested by simply gathering them from their beds. In very shallow waters, they can be gathered by hand or with small rakes. In somewhat deeper water, long-handled rakes or oyster tongs are used to reach the beds. Patent tongs can be lowered on a line to reach beds that are too deep to reach directly. In all cases, the task is the same: the oysterman scrapes oysters into a pile and then scoops them up with the rake or tongs. In some areas, a scallop dredge is used. This is a toothed bar attached to a chain bag. The dredge is towed through an oyster bed by a boat, picking up the oysters in its path. While dredges collect oysters more quickly, they heavily damage the beds, and their use is highly restricted. Until 1965, Maryland limited dredging to sailboats, and even since then motorboats can be used only on certain days of the week. These regulations prompted the development of specialized sailboats (the bug eye and later the skipjack) for dredging. Similar laws were enacted in Connecticut before World War I and lasted until 1969. The laws restricted the harvesting of oysters in state-owned beds to vessels under sail. These laws prompted the construction of the oyster sloop-style vessel to last well into the 20th century. Hope is believed to be the last-built Connecticut oyster sloop, completed in 1948. Oysters can also be collected by divers. In any case, when the oysters are collected, they are sorted to eliminate dead animals, bycatch (unwanted catch), and debris. Then they are taken to market, where they are either canned or sold live.