“Restaurants, with stay-at-home orders and quarantines, closed in March and didn’t start to reopen until late May with limited capacity and a limited number of diners eating oysters.

The diminished market threatens the livelihood of Laura Brown and Steve Weglarz, two of some dozen oyster farmers here on Little Bay and Great Bay.  

A threat to these oystermen and women is also a threat to the future of the oysters themselves since the farming conserves and restores the oyster beds and, by doing that, cleans the once overly polluted waters of the estuary and creates habitat for other species.”