South Carolina's climate is changing. Oyster restaurants could play a critical role in adaptation.

Editor’s note: Oysters are becoming a critical component of South Carolina’s defense against climate change. This is the second part of an occasional series from The Post and Courier that will track the lifecycle of an oyster, from marsh to table and back, to examine the important role these shellfish play in the Palmetto State’s future. Read part one here: bit.ly/3QKrQ3j

During prime time, the line at Bowens Island Restaurant can spill out the door. But on a weekday evening in December, things were calm.

The winter sun crept low over the salt marshes as an older couple entered. They ordered some oysters and moved towards the back, even though they were the only customers this early in the evening. Streaks of orange sunlight ran through the dining room. Music blasted from a speaker in the corner.

The popular seafood restaurant is situated low in the salt marshes between Folly Beach and James Island, at the end of a bumpy dirt road. It’s a location that comes with a lot of benefits.

Among them are easy access to shellfish beds, which allows Bowens to offer freshly harvested steamed clusters as well as locally sourced raw singles. The restaurant also has one of the most stunning natural vistas in the Charleston area. Dolphins often breach near the dock, angling for some cast-off from the fishing boats that launch from the island.

But the picture-perfect location also makes Bowens Island vulnerable to the rising tides. It’s not uncommon for the brackish waters of Folly Creek to swell past the marsh and lap against the weathered walkway during a king tide. Like many low-lying buildings around the Charleston area, the restaurant’s main dining room is elevated on stilts to prevent inundation.

Hope Barber, whose family has run Bowens since it opened eight decades ago, takes the issue of climate change seriously. It’s why the restaurant returns much of its harvest back to nature. Outside the restaurant, massive piles of oyster shells are a common sight.

To a passerby, it’s easy to mistake those piles as trash. But those shells are destined for an important job — one that will become more critical as the tides start lapping higher against Bowens Island’s shores.

Foundation of life

Oysters are the foundation of South Carolina’s estuarine ecosystem. Their reefs help trap sediment and prevent the gradual erosion of the marsh mud that many critters rely on, according to the Coastal Conservation League.

They’re also a critical component of the state’s “living shorelines” — pieces of man-made “green” infrastructure aimed at protecting the coast against stronger storm surges and floods. Along the East Coast, more communities are investing in such projects, driving up price and demand for oyster shells. 

Restaurants are a critical part of the lifecycle for these bivalves. The more restaurants that recycle with the S.C. Department of Natural Resources, the greater the supply of shells — and the less the state has to spend on importing them.

“I do think that every restaurant should have a blue bin outside of it,” said Barber, referencing DNR’s oyster recycling bins.

Barber feels the ebb and flow of the rising waters more than most. It has literally reshaped this little spit of land she grew up on.

Since May Bowen founded the restaurant in 1946, Charleston has seen an astronomical increase in tidal flooding. That year, Charleston experienced a single “minor” flood, according to the National Weather Service’s Coastal Flood Events Database. Last year, there were 54 such events — ranging from “minor” nuisance flooding to “major” washouts.

Sea levels in Charleston are set to rise another foot-plus by 2050, putting low-lying areas on the front lines of a changing climate. Tidal “sunny day” floods are forecast to increase in frequency and severity, while warming seas power a new generation of stronger, wetter tropical cyclones.

“My dad is 75, and he’s like, ‘In 50 years, it’s all going to be underwater. But I won’t be here to worry about that,’ ” Barber said with a laugh. 

Life and death

Bowens’ shells are destined to return to the marshes around James Island and Folly Beach. They’ll form the foundation for the next generation of oysters and help stabilize the ecosystem between the two communities. 

Because to create a lot of new oysters, it helps to have a lot of dead ones. 

By the estimate of Lucas Hanagriff, the raw bar manager at Fleet Landing, the restaurant will go through about 3,000 oysters in a weekend. The eatery on the banks of the Charleston Harbor last year opened a new raw bar to expand its half-shell offerings. 

The results of that expansion can be seen in its output. Fleet Landing contributed around 340,000 oyster shells to the DNR’s Oyster Recycling and Enhancement Program last year, he calculated. In addition to his restaurant work, Hanagriff has been recreationally harvesting oysters for about 20 years.

“(I’m) a firm believer in ‘you get what you give,’ and oysters are a really a prime example of that,” he said.

In the case of oysters, South Carolina literally gets out what it puts in.

Baby oysters (commonly called “spat”) require a calcium surface to grow on. After attaching to a suitable host, they’ll use calcium carbonate to grow from a microscopic scale to the size of a human palm.

“They absorb the material to make their own shell from their surrounding environments,” said Hanagriff. “So if they have other existing oyster shells to make their own shell, then we’re giving them the best chance and the best bet to grow and continue their cycle as an oyster.” 

Exact growth rate depends on a lot of factors. For example, Hanagriff said farmed oysters generally grow faster than wild oysters. That’s due to a lot of factors. Farmers can selectively breed oysters for growth speed, and the bivalves spend a chunk of their life in closely controlled nursery tanks, according to the Massachusetts Oyster Project.

Most people visiting a Charleston raw bar are more likely to encounter a farmed single-cup (which are available year-round) than a wild-harvested Lowcountry cluster.

Hanagriff said about 50 to 70 percent of the farmed oysters that Fleet Landing serves are sourced from local operations, like Lowcountry Oyster Company in Green Pond.

Bowen’s Island Restaurant previously sourced single-cups from Lowcountry Oyster Company, but Barber said their recent offerings have shifted closer to home. Many of their single cups now come from Charleston Oyster Farm on the Stono River, just up the river from Bowens.

In Hanagriff’s view, the role of an oyster restaurant is one of the most important parts of the bivalve’s lifecycle. The full lifecycle of a Lowcountry oyster, from marsh to table and back to marsh again, takes years. But for most people, the few minutes after that ice-filled tray hits their table is their only physical point of contact with the bivalve.

“After the guys who are harvesting the oysters, we’re second in line when it comes to looking after the product that we love,” he said. “It falls just as much on our shoulders to help educate.”

Up the peninsula, Leon’s Oyster Shop is one of the other major donors for DNR’s oyster recycling initiative. In addition to its raw bar offerings, the King Street restaurant sells hundreds of its “world famous” char-grilled oysters in a weekend. By the count of Andrew Hartenstein, the restaurant’s head chef, Leon’s sells up to 5,000 oysters in a busy weekend, for a total of 10,000 shells. 

“It would be silly of us to just throw those in the trash,” he said. “They came out of the ocean, they should go back into the ocean.”

Oysters are deeply tied to the Lowcountry’s past, present and future. Oyster shells left behind by pre-colonial civilizations form archaeological sites which lie hidden across South Carolina’s coast. The earliest oyster houses, or bar-restaurants, in Charleston date back to the 1820s, with the first documented mention of an oyster roast coming in the 1890s. The S.C. Shellfish Growers Association dates the earliest oyster farm in South Carolina to one established near Sullivans Island in the 1840s.

Over the last decade, the growth of shellfish farming has moved many restaurants’ focus from imported half-shell, single-cups towards locally sourced options.

And demand isn’t slowing down.

One industry survey found that global oyster and clam production was a $108.4 billion industry in 2022. That review forecasted that valuation will continue to climb 3.5 percent each year through 2030.

But even as that demand grows, South Carolina’s oysters are facing increasing pressure from a changing climate

1 billion oysters

Oysters are a remarkably resilient species. But every critter has a breaking point.

In New York, the Billion Oyster Project aims to rebuild that city’s once-thriving oyster reefs through a yearslong replanting effort. Oyster populations in New York Harbor were worn down over decades due to overly extractive harvesting, a lack of renourishment programs and a dramatic increase in pollution during the 19th century, according to the nonprofit. By 1906, the harbor was rendered “nearly lifeless.” It took almost a century before it was healthy enough to host oysters again.

“That’s just an example of why recycling, why renourishment, is important,” said Austin Johnson, Bowens Island Restaurant’s “shellfish ambassador.” 

Development along shorelines combined with climate change are squeezing South Carolina’s salt marshes, while simultaneously sending polluted runoff into the state’s estuaries. In December 2023, the state had to shut down many public shellfish beds north of Charleston after a catastrophic nor’easter pushed tremendous amounts of runoff into their beds — right at the peak of the oyster roast season.

Those deluges could become more frequent as warming seas power wetter, stronger tropical storms.

Oceans absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, leading to an increase in marine acidity levels across the globe. That acidification is creating weaker, more brittle oysters, according to the World Economic Forum.

Dave Belanger, also known as “Clammer Dave,” worked for more than two decades in South Carolina’s shellfish industry. He said that acidification isn’t as much a problem for East Coast shellfish as it is for their Pacific cousins. 

“The (acidity) problem is so bad for the guys on the West Coast because of the upwelling of the deep ocean before it hits the shore,” he said. “It’s dragging up that carbon dioxide.”

Even if its effects are worse elsewhere, Ballanger believes climate change is one of the biggest threats facing South Carolina’s oysters. He said naturally occurring intertidal oysters, which are the ones holding South Carolina’s coasts in place, are some of the most vulnerable.

“There’s been a larger natural kill of our wild oysters because of the heat during the summer,” he said. “Summers are getting so hot. The water, of course, is getting hotter along the way.”