Ken Cuccinellis post-politics endeavor: oyster farming

By Jackson Landers January 4

TANGIER ISLAND, Va. Ken Cuccinelli is holding a raw oyster. It is a small, round oyster with an unusually smooth shell and a distinctive black stripe. He stands on the deck of a crabbing boat that rocks gently on the Chesapeake Bay. The former Virginia Republican gubernatorial nominee tilts his head back and eats his first sample from the oyster farm that he co-founded with a small group of friends.

After losing an election, some politicians become lobbyists. Others immediately begin running for another office. Cuccinelli helped start an oyster farm on Tangier Island, in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay. Praised on Fox News, scoffed at by The Daily Show, the outspoken conservative now seems focused on creating a new source of sustainable jobs for people on Tangier. And on how the oysters taste.

The first settlers arrived on Tangier from England in the 1600s. Their modern descendants speak an Americanized dialect of Restoration-era English. With only 83acres of the island high enough for human habitation, cars are rare. The 727residents (as of the most recent census) typically walk or drive golf carts and scooters. Cable TV and Internet access only arrived in 2010. While Cuccinelli lost the gubernatorial election to Terry McAuliffe in 2013, he won over Tangier Islands devout Methodists, earning 90 percent of their vote.

The oyster-farming enterprise was the brainchild of Craig Suro, chairman of the Tangier Island Oyster Co. and once Virginias assistant secretary of health and human resources under then-Gov. Mark R. Warner (D). He was visiting Tangier several years ago with business partner Tim Hickey on a duck-hunting trip.

They hit on the idea of oyster farming as a new industry.

We realized that this would get them out of having to depend on quotas, Suro said, referring to catch restrictions on crabbing. You can harvest farmed oysters year-round. And this turned out to be the best possible place to try to grow oysters.

Suro might be right about Tangier being ideal for growing unusually good oysters. Most oysters are farmed in mesh bags dropped into just a few feet of water within arms reach of shore. This makes it cheap and easy to raise and harvest them. But the lower salinity of water in brackish creeks or close to the shore also tends to result in oysters without as much of the briny flavor that some aficionados prefer. In the center of the Chesapeake Bay, higher salinity makes a brinier-tasting oyster. Tangier Islands new oyster beds are also suspended just beneath the surface, bobbing along under pairs of black pontoons over 12feet of water hundreds of yards from shore. This distance isnt a problem because Tangier Islands hardy watermen already have crabbing boats that are easily turned to a new purpose.

The result of this system is a fast-growing, briny oyster with a clean flavor profile that comes from never having been in contact with the bottom. The constant agitation of the free-floating mesh sacks in mid-water also results in oyster shells that are unusually polished and smooth.

Cuccinelli, who lives and practices law in Prince William County, was initially brought in to help with the legal side of the business but quickly found himself enlisted in whatever work presented itself painting the boathouse, driving anchor posts into the bottom of the bay and diving from a boat to set up ropes for the pontoons.

See the article here:
Ken Cuccinellis post-politics endeavor: oyster farming