Olympia Oysters

Considered a luxurious delicacy across the United States, oysters are one of the most familiar animals belonging to the phylum Mollusca. According to the archaeological record in the Bay Street Shellmound, Olympia Oysters (Ostrea lurida), native to the Pacific Northwest and California, were highly prized by Ohlone tribe members. It would have been a rare treat for them to find scarcer oysters amongst more common mussel species in wetlands such as where McLaughlin State Park now sits at the mouth of the creek. Although mussels may have been the more accessible than oysters at the time, Olympia Oysters were still an abundant native species, and they were of great ecological importance, recycling nutrients for use by other plants and animals.

After the California Gold Rush and implementation of hydraulic mining in the late 1800s, sediments began to wash into the San Francisco Bay, burying oyster beds. Further sediment followed and pesticides from agricultural runoff upstream prevented oysters from recolonizing these sites. Although native oyster populations had all but vanished from the Bay by 2014, teams of conservationists have plans to restore 8,000 acres of oyster reefs by the year 2060, which would have an incredibly large, positive impact on the state of Bay Area wetlands.