When I was a boy (50 years ago), we used to drive down to Bolivar Point and at low tide, walk out onto the oysters reefs and dig oysters. We'd go home with half a dozen tow sacks or more, filled with oysters. What a feast we would have when we got home to southeast Texas. The last time I was there, twenty years ago, there was so much oil crap on the beaches you couldn't walk a dozen yards without stepping in it. And that oil wasn't natural seepage, either.

You go ahead, but I won't eat any oysters from the Gulf of Mexico anyway except fried (maybe grilled, maybe). Sorry, bud, but there's not one state that borders the Gulf that has shown any respect for the environment. Not one. Let me say that again for emphasis: not one. STill you think Galveston Bay is big enough that not all of it is polluted by the Houston ship channel.

You're more of an optimist than I, but then again, you said you ate them fried or grilled, right?

Yes, but primarily because I don't like squishy foods.

I really hate jello salad, for example, and raw oyster reminds me of jello salad.

Interesting too that the native Northwest Pacific oysters were nearly wiped out by disease. In mid-last-century outside stocks had to be introduced to shore up the flagging oyster industry in the NW. Nowadays virtually all commercial oysters originating from the west coast are actually Pacific Giant Oysters (native to Japan and SW of there) and Kumamoto Oysters (dubiously different species from the Giant Oysters, they are probably only a dwarf population of the same), native species. In any case the west coast has little to brag about. By the way, Pacific Giant Oysters are banned from live import into Texas waters lest they escape and decimate our native oysters. An experimental release in Chesapeake Bay also introduced pathogens which wiped out their native stocks.