The following is a sneak peek from our August issue, on newsstands now.
The scallop’s blue eyes rim the perimeter of both shells. (Photo by Christopher Assaf)
I.
You’ve no doubt heard of the Cousins Croxton by now.
How they learned, in 2001, that their grandfather’s lease for growing oysters was about to lapse and, ditching their careers in corporate America, decided they were not going to let the family tradition of oystering slip like silt through their fingers.
How they planted 3,000 seed oysters in 2002, a time when oystering in the state was at its lowest ebb, and set about reviving the Rappahannock Oyster Co.
How success beyond their wildest dreams followed, and followed fast, as the oysters flourished and their company grew and grew — with restaurants from Richmond to Washington, D.C., in their portfolio, and clients from across the country, including Eric Ripert at New York’s famed Le Bernardin.
And now the restorationists are at it again.
On the heels of opening their fourth oyster bar in Los Angeles this summer, Ryan and Travis Croxton are bent on reviving another saltwater-loving creature: the bay scallop.
But this rescue effort has proven far more challenging than their first.
It is a project three years in the making, a project shot through with failure and frustration and tens of thousands of dollars gone to waste.
Yet they persist.
What explains this quixotic — or is it Ahabian? — hunt for a little-known, long-forgotten, filter-feeding mollusk once extinct from Virginia waters?
The answer, as before, is family.
Only in this case, it has nothing to do with extending the family name and nearly everything to do with redeeming it. “It’s our chance to reinvent the story of the bay,” Ryan says.
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Ryan (left) and Travis Croxton (Photo by Jay Paul)
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A view of the Croxtons’ scallop farm on Cockles Creek, which feeds the Chesapeake Bay (Photo by Christopher Assaf)
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A photograph of Ryan and Travis Croxton's grandfather, William A. Croxton, at his store in Laneview. (Photo by Jay Paul)
II.
The story of the Cousins Croxton begins, properly, with the story of their great-grandfather.
In 1899, James Authur Croxton leased two acres of the Rappahannock River to round out his farming enterprises through Virginia’s coastal land and waterways.
He was buying into a history and system — one that would allow his family and its descendants to flourish, even as it depleted the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem.
He didn’t know this at the time. He couldn’t have.
“[My great-grandfather] was responding to a lack of government bureaucracy and to growing market demand,” Ryan says.
At the turn of the century, the Chesapeake Bay and the brackish waters that feed it were one of the world’s largest suppliers of oysters, with up to 20 million bushels being harvested each year.
It seemed the supply was endless, and that what was would always be.
Enter greed.
Enter the aggressive harvesting that crossed the line into overharvesting. Add in pollution from a growing country. And then shellfish disease set in.
It is commonly believed that a 1933 hurricane destroyed the Chesapeake Bay scallop by wiping out its wild habitat, eelgrass. In fact, the collapse of the bay scallop was set in motion by the oyster harvesting practices adopted by James Croxton and hundreds of others.
To address demand, harvesting went from plucking the creatures from sea beds to dredging and destroying natural habitats. In the boom years, 0yster beds were crushed, and the eelgrass, on which the bay scallop depended for reproduction, was literally gutted.
By the time Ryan and Travis took over their great-grandfather’s company in 2001, there were just 23,000 bushels of oysters being harvested from the bay annually. And the scallop population? Well, it had long been eradicated.
Bay scallops are dime-to-nickel-sized, smaller than their sea-dwelling cousins. (Photo by Christopher Assaf)
III.
On an early June morning in the Virginia Eastern Shore town of Atlantic, I’m led to a blue, flat-bottomed, 24-foot Carolina skiff. The boat bobs against a worn and splintered dock. There is no ladder to help you get from the dock and into the boat.
Yet I jump the 3 feet, trusting the smooth, bearded smile of the Rappahannock Oyster Co.’s farm manager, Patrick Oliver.
The company’s watermen — short on words, but long on knowledge — are taking me on a tour of the bay waters so that I can see for myself, firsthand, the extent of the campaign the Croxtons have launched.
The grounds of the oyster house operations are littered with oyster cages and oyster shells. A few pallets of “Old Salts” are staked 4 feet high beside the dock, but the only sign that scallops exist among this operation is a small, purple plastic laundry basket filled with the dried shells of scallops from years prior.
Scallops, Oliver tells me, are unusually sensitive creatures. They are not nearly as hearty as oysters, which he refers to as “rocks” by contrast.
This is why our boat edges away from the dock and the rows of neatly stacked oyster cages just a few feet from the shore. We must ride to the scallops’ preferred waters.
We wind through eddies and tidal creeks, passing duck blinds that dot the edges of lusciously green marsh grasses. Birds swoop and dive for prey.
They seemed to be saying, “We’re here, but there’s not a lot of us. Tread lightly.”
Fifteen minutes on, we arrive at the scallop fields. We are not far from Chincoteague. Farther on, but distantly visible, is the NASA launch pad at Wallops Island.
Having heard about encouraging signs of the yield this year — year three — I am expecting to see scallops in profusion. But as I tour the fields, this is not the case. In fact, there are not many scallops at all.
I’m confused.
I had expected the scallops to be nestled under water, amid the replenished eelgrasses. Instead, large plastic-mesh bags covered in neon green seaweed were lifted onto the boat, exposing crusty, slime-covered tiny animals, each with two rows of 15 to 20 tiny, bright blue eyes. They seemed to be saying, “We’re here, but there’s not a lot of us. Tread lightly.”
At that moment, I remember Ryan mentioning this year’s 90 percent loss of their seed scallops.
A 90 percent death rate?
Ah, but that 10 percent, I’m assured by Oliver, is massively encouraging, the best they’ve had yet — and bodes well for the future.
The Croxtons are not the only people to come along attempting to revive the bay scallop, merely the latest hopefuls.
The Virginia Institute of Marine Science has been working to restore the scallop to the bay since the 1960s. Happy to see the cause being taken up by such high-profile businessmen — and banking on the intersection of science and conscientious commerce — in 2015, VIMS gifted 3,000 seed scallops to the Croxtons.
That first year, the colony collapsed.
The next year, with seed scallops from Northern hatcheries, the Croxtons purchased 50,000 scallops to grow to maturity; 48,000 died, leaving them without a viable crop.
The Croxtons chalked it up to research and rationalized the more than $10,000 in labor and product lost as “development” money.
The current crop, however, appears not only to be surviving, but thriving. Even with a 90 percent death rate, there are roughly 20,000 seed scallops left.
Holding a mature scallop in these fields is an extraordinary thing. At each float, Oliver brings a cage close to his face. At first I think he is smelling them, then I realize he is searching.
These oyster-turned-scallop-men are on the hunt for worthy specimens. They are trying to show me the fruits of their years-long labor. We eventually turn up two mature scallops that elicit a touch of giddiness from the crew.
A hundred mature scallops have recently been culled from the floats so that Rappahannock’s chef in Richmond could taste them and experiment with preparations.
The scallops I watch being hoisted onto the boat are tiny when compared to their cousin the sea scallop, that meaty, tender, half dollar-sized wonder so many of us relish, especially when seared in a hot pan. The bay scallop is dime- to nickel-sized — an amuse bouche. With one hand cupped, you can hold five to 10 of them. Watching hundreds of them in their shells clamber together inside their plastic cages, they just don’t seem as grand as the design to bring them to this point.
I have to remind myself that the hunt for the tiny mollusk is about more than just finding an obscure gem to put on the menus of their restaurants — a conversation piece.
It is, first and foremost, about correcting a historic, familial mistake.
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Divine “Tink” Hinmon (left) and Kevonte Byrd check a scallop cage within a float near Chincoteague. (Photo by Christopher Assaf)
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Rappahannock Executive Chef Justin Burchill tops bay scallops with a cucumber-and-yuzu granita. (Photo by Anna Moriah Myers)
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Bay scallops getting cold-smoked in their shells via a stovetop smoker (Photo by Eileen Mellon)
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The finished product (Photo by Eileen Mellon)
IV.
Quiet, calm and unassumingly approachable, Ryan and Travis show no sign of the stress inherent in building a second aquaculture empire.
“We didn’t inherit the old ways,” Ryan says. “The company had declined. We got to make a fresh start [with oysters], and as I think Jefferson stated, you need a little revolution every 20 years or so.”
The bay scallop is still not ready to go into menu circulation, but Ryan promises that day is not far away. He seems even a little obsessed with the notion. In the meantime, it will make its formal debut at a dinner party later this month at Rappahannock.
Before he can plan his menu, Executive Chef Justin Burchill has to understand the nature of his subject. He does not have much room for error, given how few scallops he is given to work with, and also given how short their shelf life is (a couple of days at most). It is exacting work.
On a sweltering day in early June, the chef lets me in on one possible preparation for the big dinner. It begins by cold-smoking the scallops in their shells with a stovetop smoker. From there, he sets them on ice in a wide-rimmed bowl. Those bright blue eyes I saw so vividly on the boat have retreated in the shucking process.
It’s not as briny, though there is a hint of its love of waters with high salinity.
On a half shell, a small, off-white mound surrounded by a gray, smoky liquid is topped with a cucumber-and-yuzu granita. The bright acidity of the granita balances the brine and the hint of smoke nestled in the tiny half shell.
The taste, it’s … different. With one precious bite, I try my best to savor and memorize the flavor and texture.
What it is not is an oyster. It’s not as briny, though there is a hint of its love of waters with high salinity. It’s a touch sweeter than an oyster, and maybe that’s because it doesn’t scream of its origins the way an oyster does. Though much smaller than any oyster I’ve slurped, this tiny scallop is meatier.
And it remains to be seen whether the city, and the wider dining public, will embrace this curious creature.
It just may be that the bay scallop is an acquired taste, and that with time and repeated exposure, it will become as much a part of the local culinary culture as pimento cheese, briny oysters and craft beer.
Or not.
Either way — regardless of the scallop yields for the next few years — the Cousins Croxton will soon be able to rest content, knowing that what their ancestor unknowingly helped to set in motion, they have attempted to right. With luck, and continued hard work, they may yet prove that sustainability and consumption can coexist.
