North Florida’s once-profitable oyster business faces a layered threat from water-flow issues, environmental concerns, health and safety regulations and economic realities. That decline shows in Apalachicola, which sits on the river of the same name, 75 miles southwest of Tallahassee. It is on the Florida Panhandle near the Big Bend - the juncture of where the west coast of the Florida peninsula makes its turn to the west. Apalachicola-based oyster houses have either stopped selling to restaurants on the wholesale market or have opted to supplement their supply with oysters from Texas and Louisiana. The reasons for the decline are many. That perfect blend of water Vinson described is endangered by the population explosion in Atlanta, 340 miles to the north. In a decades-long dispute, Florida has claimed Georgia is hurting the oyster harvest by taking too much water from Lake Lanier, the federal reservoir that supplies water to the Atlanta area and feeds the Apalachicola River.
A farmed white sturgeon
A local Florida Blue Marlin
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