Hayes Oyster Company

05/30/2024

WHEN ONLY THE BEST WILL DO:
Tillamook's 'BAY BEAUTY' oysters are savory, sweet, salty, and full of spirit and finesse - the essence of umami and are in the league of gastronomical greatness of Dom Perignon, Pata Negra ham, Beluga caviar, Wagyu beef, Perigord truffles.
We are familiar with four basic taste sensations - sweet, sour, salty and bitter.
The concept of umami was used by the Japanese before the 1900′s.
It wasn’t until the early 1980′s that it became recognized internationally as a fifth taste.
Umami is characterized as being pleasantly savory, without being excessively salty, and comes from an amino acid that occurs naturally in food like oysters, wine and mushrooms.

10/19/2019

BEFORE OYSTER HATCHERIES:
Oysters spawn (reproduce) in the warmest water of the year. The spawn can turn the water milky white. That milky water is billions of baby oysters.
Baby oysters are able to swim for about a month. Within a month they develop a sticky tail, their shells begin to harden, and they sink, and set. The babies will set on anything smooth - preferably old, clean, oyster shells.
When the time comes for them to sink and there is nothing for them to set on, they die.

When the babies set, it is permanent, and once set, they will be left in place to winter-over, hardening up before the trip home to Tillamook Bay in the early spring.
It will be another year and a half to two years before they are ready to harvest.

Before oyster hatcheries, NW oyster farmers depended on two methods for acquiring oyster seed. One was this method of getting a natural set, or, importing seed from Japan.
We caught our seed on a mile of beachfront on Debob Bay, Washington.
Debob was a well known estuary for catching natural oyster sets because in the summer it had little circulation and the water temperature would get warm enough for a spawn, and, for the spawn to live long enough and not be moved out of the setting area.
Tillamook Bay does not allow for this kind of operation because its cold water would not allow oysters to spawn and if there was a spawn, the cold water may kill it. Also, Tillamook's two daily tidal changes would move, doom, any spawn away from the setting area.

In Bay City, for the purpose of catching these baby oysters, holes were punched in seasoned shell and strung onto 10' wire strings. Twenty-five wire strings were tied into bales for transporting them to Debob Bay.

Depending on a natural set was an uncertain way to rely on seed because during the month the babies were swimming, a cold spell, rain or wind on Debob may kill or move the babies out of the setting area. The result may be a years seed supply lost. We had years when there was no set, or a small set, or a good set, or, a very good set.
We were always at the mercy of mother nature.

This August, 1973 photo shows Sam Hayes, President of Hayes Oyster Co., on the beach at Debob Bay, inspecting that years set.

10/19/2019

In April 2011, OPB/PBS produced a history of Oregon's oyster industry titled: "THE OYSTERMEN".

This OPB documentary shows until 1928, when Jesse Hayes planted the first oysters in Oregon, there were no oyster farmers, only oyster harvesters.
Harvesters brought the native Olympias to near extinction.

​https://www.opb.org/television/programs/oregon-experience/article/the-oystermen/

Explore the historic dips and turns of the Pacific Northwest oyster business.

09/24/2019

HOW THE GENETIC INTEGRITY OF THE KUMAMOTO WAS SAVED

In the early 1990's, after the advent of oyster hatcheries, the hatcheries began experimenting, cross breeding Pacific oysters with Kumamoto oysters.
NW oyster growers soon realized they may be losing the pure genetic strain of the Kumamoto.

Soon, no one could tell what was or what was not a pure Kumamoto. The industry even named the new cross-breed, calling it a Giga-Moto.
News reports told us there were, supposedly, no Kumamoto's left in their native Japan, at least not enough to allow exporting Kumamoto seed to NW coast growers.
Hayes Oyster Company had been raising Kumamoto's since the Japanese seed first became available in 1948.

Anja Robinson, from Oregon's Hatfield Marine Science Center and a long time friend of Hayes Oyster Company's, asked us if we could find her genetically pure Kumamoto. All our Kumamotos came from Japan.
We had an old bed and were able to find about a bushel of over 20 year old Kumamotos. They were beautiful and as big as a grapefruit.
They were pure Kumamoto stock.

I drove them to Anja and Willie Breeze at the Hatfield Marine Science Center. It was their due diligence that gave us the pure Kumamoto we have today.
It was Anja's passion that spearheaded and played an important role in giving the world the pure Kumamoto genes. As a result, the world is a happier place.
Anja received little credit, due to the fact, it was said, she didn't have a Doctorate degree, so -
Thank You, Anja

The photos below show Hayes Oyster Company twenty-plus year-old Kamamoto from the bushel donated to the OSU Seagrant Lab in Newport - for the purpose of preserving the integrity of the Kumamoto gene.
This Kumamoto is just under six inches long.

http://scarc.library.oregonstate.edu/oh150/hmsc/video-hmsc.html

09/27/2018

This 1928 Oregon Historical Society photograph, is Jesse Hayes (1883-1957), showing, after planting the first oysters in Oregon, that oysters would not only grow in Tillamook Bay, they would thrive. Cape Meares is in the background.

In 1928, before Japanese oyster seed was introduced to the west coast,
the only oyster that existed on the west coast was the small, native,
Olympia oyster.

In 1849, the California gold-rush created a demand for the native Olympia's.
Large shipments were shipped to San Francisco where that market quickly became a bottomless pit. That bottomless pit lead to over harvesting.
Over harvesting resulted in the Olympia oyster's near extinction, because then, unlike now, there were no oyster farmers - only oyster harvesters.

Since then, in Tillamook Bay, Hayes Oyster Company planted, cultivated, harvested and processed up to 100,000 gallons of oysters a year. 100,000 gallons is about 4,500,000 to 5,000,000 oysters, or 300,000 to 400,000 dozen.
They were sold in glass jars to Safeway Oregon, California and Arizona.

Cold water and low salinity from the five-freshwater salmon-bearing rivers that flow through Tillamook Bay prevent the problems that occur in most of the world's shellfish growing areas.

Tillamook Bay's combination of low salinity, plus two daily tidal infusions from the Pacific Ocean, has created the perfect habitat for oysters, producing the sweetest, fattest, tastiest all-season oyster found anywhere in the world, and arguably - The Tastiest Morsels on Earth.

02/18/2018

THIS 1931 OYSTER CLAIMS SURVEY MAP SHOWS THE ORIGINAL, GRANDFATHERED, OYSTER CLAIMS ON TILLAMOOK BAY. IT ALSO SHOWS THE TWO SALMON CANNERY BLOCKS ON HAYES OYSTER DRIVE.

Learning in 1928, that Japanese oyster seed was available in Canada and may thrive in Pacific NW estuaries, Jesse Hayes, from Tillamook Bay, after showing the Japanese oyster would thrive in Tillamook Bay, he, lobbied the Oregon legislature to pass the "Oregon Oyster Act".

In 1931, "The Oregon Oyster Act" was passed, giving citizens the right to lease State lands, under water, for the purpose of growing oysters.
To lease state land for oyster farming required an official survey of Oregon's oyster growing grounds. These original leases are now, under State law, referred to as "Grandfathered Oyster Claims".

The original map, shown below is the "1931 Survey of Oyster Claims for Tillamook Bay".
The map also shows that Tillamook Bay's oyster claims were platted
into 50-acre parcels because at that time, the Act read: "One fifty acre claim per person".

The name written in each Plat is the name of the original lease holder.
Nearly all were relatives or friends from Bay City, Garibaldi and Tillamook.
We soon changed the law, eliminating the one Plat per person restriction.
The original lease holders soon became discouraged and gave up.
Jesse Hayes bought most of those leases and Hayes Oyster Company was born.

Also, the two Bay City salmon cannery properties (Parcel 1. and 2.) can be seen on this map.
On the lower left, you can see the Cape Meares Lighthouse.

10/01/2016

NW OYSTER HISTORY
The Chinook Observer
OCTOBER 1, 2003

The photo below, taken on a Willapa Bay oyster bed in the early 1950's, shows Jesse Hayes (with hat, tie and oyster knive) educating two University of Washington scientists.

RUGGED INDIVIDUALS
By DOUG ALLEN
LEADERS OF THE NW OYSTER INDUSTRY OF THE PAST 70 YEARS,

PART 1
The oystermen of the 20th century were, at the very least, a highly competitive lot. With apologies offered, the list is long, and not all of the stories will be told.

JOE DOUPE' - Ilwaco Oyster Co.
Joseph H. Doupe was born in County Limerick, Ireland in June, 1881, the seventh of 10 children. After keeping books for department stores in Ireland for six years, young Doupe and two brothers joined an older brother in Portland, Oregon in 1904.

In the next few years the young Irishman established himself in a new home and met his bride-to-be, Margaret Rogers. The couple wed in 1909. Margaret had been born in Minneapolis in 1887 and come west with her parents. Her father, Charles Fremont Rogers, owned and operated the Ilwaco sawmill.

When Japanese oysters were first planted in the late 1920s, Joe and Harry decided to try their hand in the oystering business. The Ilwaco Oyster Company was organized in 1930, with the original investors, including the Doupes, Clyde Woodham, Ira Murakami, Roy Herrold, John O'Meara, Bub Baker, and brothers Alex and Bert Shier.
With $35,000 raised from the initial investment period, the company purchased oyster land, built and acquired boats, and constructed the small plant which was later expanded and known as the Jolly Roger.

Under the direction of Doupe, for the duration of its existence, the company's oysters were largely shipped to California markets.
Not all of the original investors stayed with the company: During the first year Ira Murakami chose to withdraw in order to start his own oyster business.

In August 1951 Doupe accepted an offer to sell the company to Verne Hayes for a half of a million dollars. When the transaction was completed, company properties were transferred to Coast Oyster Company, "lock, stock, and barrel." At the time the deal was believed to be the largest and most important sale in the history of the Willapa Bay oyster industry.

The Ilwaco Oyster Company was an important contributor to Willapa Bay's total oyster industry. Several of the company's initial stockholders and more than a few of the key employees went on to play significant roles with other companies, including Ira Murakami, Harland Herrold, Wallace Woodham, and others.

VERNE HAYES - Coast Oyster Co.
You've heard the story of the man who bought the Brooklyn Bridge?
Verne Hayes could have been the person who sold it to him. Those who knew the man admired his ability to talk and attract prospective investors. The adjective convoluted might best describe his actions and personality. Associated words include entangled, multilayered, twisted, and devious. "Verne Hayes was a good guy - he created a lot of employment for a lot of people around here."

Ownership and Management:
In November 1946, Hayes purchased 51 percent of Arnold Waring's Haines Oyster Company. The transfer of stock gave Coast Oyster Company control of all of the Haines company's oyster ground, oysters, equipment (including boats and dredges) and leases. Coast also took control of 1,000 acres of oyster ground at Netarts and 2,500 acres at Tillamook Bay.

Throughout the '40s several oyster businesses were acquired by Hayes, including Johnson-McGowan, Long Island Oyster Company, Eberhardt Oyster Company, Eagle Oyster Packing Company, and and the Ilwaco Oyster Company. With these transactions Coast gained control of the former Willapoint and Bay Point oyster grounds. During this time Verne held the company position of vice-president and general manager. Company attorney Ward Kumm, Seattle, was president, with George Clark the secretary-treasurer.

Using the Willapoint brand, and with the addition of Ilwaco Oyster, Coast's holdings had become the largest in the Pacific Northwest. Hayes' contrived claim of 350,000 gallons of oysters harvested and sold per year was unrealistic, as it amounted to more than one-third of the output of all the companies in the Northwest. (Although the claim was exaggerated, by 1951 Coast had grown quite large, with plants at South Bend, Bay Center, Nahcotta, Poulsbo, Allyn, Eureka (California), Oregon, and at Grass Creek on the north shore of Grays Harbor. )

In 1950 a Tillamook schoolteacher dropped by the South Bend plant to say hello to his former seventh grade student. Although Hayes was not at the plant, the teacher told his hosts that as a seventh grader Verne had dreamed of being the world's biggest oyster farmer. Ed Gruble remembers that Hayes, still dreaming the dream, confided that his goal was to produce one million gallons of oysters a year. Today, veteran oystermen smile and wag their heads when they hear these numbers.

In the early 1950s Hayes convinced Van Camps Seafood to take over the sales of the company's oyster stew operation. (During the time Van Camps owned the company Coast sold oysters under the "Chicken of the Sea" label.)

In 1948 Hayes met Ed Gruble at a mutual friend's Seattle home. Gruble was soon convinced that he and his two trucks (used to haul produce on a seasonal basis) would be a good fit during the winter's oyster packing season at South Bend. Soon after arriving in South Bend, Hayes asked the inexperienced Gruble to assume management of the troubled plant. A quick learner, Ed soon had doubled the cannery's output and had worked himself into a fulltime position.

As Gruble tells the story, unfulfilled promises convinced him to quit the company in late 1951. Within months he had started his own oyster stew business, known at that time as the Willapa Bay Oyster Company. In 1954 Ed and two new partners renamed the business the Hilton Oyster Company and moved it to Seattle.

Bringing in the Big Players In early December 1955, Hayes announced that both B. C. Packers, Ltd. and Chicken of the Sea, Inc. (Van Camps) had purchased an equal amount of Coast Oyster common stock. With the changes in the company, B. C. Packers assumed the sales of the fresh and frozen seafood, while Chicken of the Sea continued as they had - as the company's exclusive sales agent for canned oysters and canned oyster stew. (Located at Steveston, British Columbia, B. C. Packers was, at the time, the largest salmon packer in the world.)

Regardless of the seemingly positive changes in the operation, the company lost money. Van Camp soon wanted out, and B. C. Packers assumed a larger role in the company. (Most likely because the Canadian company wished to protect their investment.)

Stan Sheriff (of B. C. Packers) was assigned to be Coast's West Coast sales manager. Shortly after Sheriff had taken over the head office, B. C. Packers grew uneasy with Verne Hayes and arranged to have attorney Ward Kumm to take control of the company. With Sheriff and Kumm at the helm by the end of 1955, Hayes was ousted from any position of authority with the company.

Fiasco at Eureka: Hayes headed for Eureka and Humboldt Bay where the unflappable promoter found another investor to put up money for a new operation - raising oysters on wooden racks. The operation was a disaster - the wood used for the racks rotted, and when Verne tried treated wood the sets failed. Wallace Woodham remembers, "Verne spent $150,000 to get the plant ready in Eureka, then the oysters turned black."
Without oysters there was no business, and facing imminent losses, the investor wanted out. The undaunted Hayes found another skittish backer, but the new man was soon scared off.

In a surprising twist to the story, Coast Oyster came to the rescue of the Humboldt operation. New money was infused into the venture and in October, 1956 Ralph Hayes (one of Vern's five brothers) smashed a bottle of champagne over the bow of a newly constructed hydraulic dredge named in his honor.
In attendance at the celebration were Eureka city officials, the designer of the dredge, R. H. Bailey, along with the Dr. Roy Elsey, aquaculturist and vice-president of B. C. Packers.

Designed along the lines of an Alaskan gold mining dredge, the "harvester" never performed as expected. Wallace Woodham remembers that to took $90,000 to refit the dredge after the first year. "Originally designed to be towed, it was supposed to dredge in a circle. It's still used, though, on this bay."

More Changes: Wayne Morris first arrived at South Bend in 1958, having managed the Allyn plant from 1956. (Wayne had earlier worked for Coast in 1955, at Eureka.) After Morris first supervised the plant operation, Richard Murakami asked to 'borrow" Wayne for the beds operation while the cannery was closed during the winter of 1958-59.

As Wayne explains, "After that I ran the oyster grounds under the supervision of Richard." Wayne also recalled that at the time the South Bend plant was daily producing 2,000 cases of oyster stew.

Hayes' troubles returned in the early 1960s. B. C. Packers wanted him out, this time for good. Coast bookkeeper Dory Haldorson, officially under the employment of the Packing company, was named as Coast's new general manager.

It was a time of much intrigue. Hayes had been accused of arranging sales of various plants (canneries) while hiding his intentions of recapturing majority control of the stock. An example of this concerned the Coast plant at Poulsbo. Joe Engman had purchased the plant, but discovered Hayes' scheme. Engman's payment was directed to creditors, stifling an effort by Hayes to persuade other shareholders to join his "movement." (Engman's plant became known as the Keystone Oyster Company.)

Dory Haldorson remained at the helm of the company throughout the balance of the 1960s and 1970s. To Haldorson's credit, Coast remained active and maintained its position as one of the largest oyster operations in the region. During this time canning operations were halted and all oysters were shipped to the South Bend plant to be processed fresh or frozen. Richard Murakami and Wayne Morris continued to work as Coast's Willapa Bay supervisors.
At Nahcotta Wallace Woodham ran the oyster grounds operation. Jeff Murakmai still worked everyday, but age had slowed down the veteran oysterman.

For all practical purposes, Wayne Morris was the man who ran the Coast operation during these years. Today, Tim Morris, Wayne's son, oversees the company's oystering and Manila clam business.

JOHN PETRIE: In 1982 John Petrie led a group that purchased Coast Oyster Company. Petrie's partners were Floyd Bagley and none other than Verne Hayes. Although Verne had amazingly re-emerged as an owner, times had changed. It was during these years that a catastrophic fire destroyed the South Bend plant. Revamped insurance coverage paid for a new plant which Hayes helped design. Verne passed away in 1989.

The changes were not done. Clear Springs Trout Company of Idaho acquired Coast late in the decade, but then grew troubled with the financial situation of the company. (Clear Springs is more than a fish farm company; several investors are millionaire owners of the Ore-Ida potato fortune.)

By 1992, Clear Springs decided to cut its losses and turned the business over to the mortgage lender. It has been suggested that the company lost as much as $8 million in its turn as owner of Coast.

With the bank holding a huge financial burden, John Petrie managed to re-acquire Coast for only a portion of the debt. (The total debt was reportedly in the neighborhood of $12 million.) Since that time Petrie has had complete control of the company.

Regardless of who owns today's Coast Seafoods, the name Verne Hayes still resonates among the oystering community. The name Verne Hayes can still cause blood to boil and talk to become heated.

MALCOM EDWARDS: Oysterman and PCOGA official.
Malcolm B. Edwards had a succinct description of his oystermen comrades, both friend and foe. Tongue in cheek, he called them "rugged individuals."

Like many of his generation, Edwards was essentially a self-educated man. He quit school in the eighth grade to help support his parents, who ran a small nursery business on Eklund Park hill (South Bend). Eventually, Edwards became a land surveyor through correspondence courses and practical work at the Pacific County engineering office.
Edwards acquired his first oyster ground during the Depression, a small parcel at Stony Point. After serving in a U. S. Navy construction battalion (CBs) in the South Pacific during World War II, he returned home to establish an independent engineering office, as well as build a small oyster business.
Malcolm served several years as the director of the Pacific Coast Oyster Growers' Association.

"Dad worked with Verne Hayes of Coast Oyster to capitalize on the oyster's 'apocryphal aphrodisiac' with virility powers. They developed a pill using dried oysters with vitamins and minerals added. I believe the pill was manufactured in Japan. The effort went so far as to get government approval, which was the same color as an oyster, under the brilliantly conceived name 'Retsyo,' which, of course, is oyster spelled backwards. The pill failed in the market as well as in bed. I think this episode was in the late '40s or early '50s."

When Coast Oyster Company decided to build an oyster plant in Japan, Hayes hired Edwards and sent him to Japan to help design and implement U. S. sanitary and automation standards.
" I don't know what ultimately became of the cannery - my guess is that it was sold to a Japanese buyer. Dad was also responsible for negotiating seed contracts from the Japanese and then making sure it arrived safely in the U. S.
It was a mammoth undertaking with thousands of cases of seed arriving at the Port of Willapa Harbor for distribution."

(Hayes Oyster Co.'s seed also came through Willapa Harbor.)
The company Verne created to develop, package and promote his oyster pill, failed or not, he eventually sold for a profit.
Because of the pill, in Bay City, Hayes Oyster Company installed a large, walk-in quick-freezer. We graded, separated, oysters into male and females, then quick-froze them, they were delivered to a lab and turned into pills. They were packaged in beautiful gold boxes, the pills wrapped in pairs - blue for male, pink for female - one in the morning and one at night. In the USA they were called OystaMins, and, I believe they were once advertised in Pl***oy for their Vim, Vigor, and Vitality."

07/19/2016

DEALERS IN SHELLFISH SINCE 1912

In 1910, the Oregon Fish Commission began issuing
Shellfish Permits.
In 1912, Jesse Hayes applied for and received the first
Shellfish Permit for Tillamook Bay.

The article below, from the March 17, 1922, Bay City Examiner, records his and his then partner's shipment of salmon to San Francisco.
He also wholesaled crab and clams, all, including the salmon, came out of Tillamook Bay.

05/04/2016

This 1932 photo taken in Bay City, shows Jesse Hayes on the dock. Three of his six sons, Sam, Verne and Lynn, are on barges loaded with oyster seed from Japan. When the tide is high enough they will be towed to the beds for planting.

Planting seed meant scattering the seed high in the air with a shovel or fork so the shells, covered with babies, would be spaced evenly as they sank to the bed.
Before the seed was shipped from Japan, the wood for the boxes was submerged in the mud flats and soaked for months, allowing the seed to stay cool and damp for the long trip (maybe two weeks from Japan to their beds in Tillamook Bay). On the left, you can see the discarded boxes. The Japanese used this same box for shipping seed for the next sixty years.
I have about fifty boxes I use for bookshelves.

(This property, called the Cooperative Property, is shown on the east end of the 1931 OYSTER CLAIMS SURVEY MAP)

05/04/2016

Sam, Verne and Lynn Hayes, still oystering 40 years after the 1932 photo below. This photo was taken on the dock in Bay City in 1982.

04/07/2016

Before WWII, the American public ate little seafood.
During WWII, meat became scarce and was strictly rationed.
That rationing resulted in a new public awareness and demand for fresh seafood (fish, crab, clams and oysters).

Before WWII, because of the short shelf-life and little local demand, Hayes Oyster Company canned oyster stew.
During WWII, the U.S. Army consumed a lot of canned oyster stew.
After the War and by the early 1950's, because of the new market for fresh seafood, we stopped canning oysters and began wholesaling oysters fresh, in glass jars.

Today, we see another change in the oyster market from canned, to fresh in jars, and now, fresh in the shell.

Many people prefer oysters in the shell because during the process of shucking, washing and packing, the oyster loses its liquor, whereas, oysters eaten fresh out of the shell retain that liquor - in their cupped shell.

The photo below shows the label we used during the years we canned oyster stew. At home, we had stacked cases of stew from which I had plenty.

04/07/2016

This 1949 photo, in Bay City, shows the Hayes Oyster Cannery and notes: "Capacity - 500 cases canned oyster stew per day."
You can see the boiler above the truck cab.