A nautical topographic map of the Wellfleet bay areas lays spread over a table at the Wellfleet harbormaster's office. Many of the photographs in this exhibit are focused on the area seen on the map named Mayo Beach and the areas to the left of that (where a small piece of Egg Island can be seen). Wellfleet is located in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, halfway between the "tip" and "elbow" of Cape Cod. Prior to 2020, the population of 2,750 (2010 census) would swell to nearly sixfold during the summer. After the COVID-19 scare began, thousands of New Yorkers and Bostonians fled the city for summer residences on the Cape.

The work of a shellfish farmer is rough, hard, four-seasons work that many people would not be able to handle. It can be muddy, sloppy, wet, bone-and-soul chillingly cold, and the oyster and clam shells are treacherously sharp.

Harvesting oysters requires measuring the sizes of the beast, depending on one's harvesting license. The picker here also cuts away outgrowths of the shell as he works, producing a clean, 'pretty', aesthetically pleasing oyster demanded by the market and its consumers.

Captain R. Andrew Cummings has been shellfishing in Wellfleet for 22 years. He began operating his own farm, Wash-Ashore Oyster Ranch, in 1998. "When I move oysters they go globally," he told me in January 2020. "They could go through seven wholesalers before getting to the consumer. There are all kinds of special controls and methods to make sure that [shellfish] are safe for human consumption. There is a whole protocol of steps regulated and logged. I have to log my work in paper logs and online every day: this is a critical component that insures a safe and traceable product for the public." "I'm losing my business, I'm losing my home," says Andrew Cummings on 28 April 2020. "The entire global distribution system has collapsed. I've had no sales now for months. Because it's a farm my work doesn't stop. Now no one is coming to work: I can't hire anyone because they are making more money , substantially more, on unemployment. I can't even pay myself. All of the medium size and larger operations are in the same situation. I have friends that are in worse shape than me."

Wash-Ashore employee Jay Pawa works crating oysters to send to the 2019 market. With the coming of COVID-19 in 2020, the market crashed: restaurants closed, wholesalers stopped buying, the global distribution system collapsed. Ninety percent of oyster sales occurred through restaurants, at raw bars and table service. "People don't eat oysters alone," Andrew Cummings says, 28 April 2020, "they eat them in groups, at restaurants, and all the restaurants and stores are closed."

"There's no standard, everyone does this differently," says Andrew Cummings, in October 2019. Here Andrew Cummings works with employee Jay Pawa prepping a market order for delivery. "When I load a truck for a market order it has to go directly from the farm to the dealer, and there are temperature guidelines throughout the chain, from the moment the animal is harvested, to the moment it gets to the consumer, that insure public health and safety." "It's very site specific: and there's a million ways of doing it." Capt. Cummings oysters grow in racks suspended off the sea bed in a process called "off-bottom grow out". Here the oysters—bivalves always pumping water—get water flow from every angle and the water delivers nutrients (food). In contrast, "on-bottom grow out" is a technique that simulates what is going on in the wild.

Prior to 2020, Wash-Ashore Oyster Ranch supplied multiple major seafood wholesalers and their oysters were enjoyed across the US and abroad. With the collapse of the industry due to COVID-19, the future is uncertain. "If we don't plant, if we don't get help to maintain and manage the infrastructure," ANDREW CUMMINGS SAID, 28 APRIL 2020, "we're not going to make it. We have to plant. This is a FARM (emphasis original). We have to keep doing the work."

The legality of oysters are determined by the size, which is not strictly dependent on the age of the animal. The sizes of the oysters are measured by 'the gauge' (shown here). Different gauges are used for different sized oysters depending on what the oyster farmer is selling. If the oyster goes through the hole at all it is illegal: too small, too young to be harvested. "In Massachusetts, the oyster gauge—or ring—was traditionally for a three inch oyster," says Andrew Cummings. "But if you are harvesting 'petites' these can be down to two and a half inches."

Shellfish farmer William Barrio and his colleague Erin DeFeo work the Barrio grant, in the fall of 2019, on the little sandbar shoal to the left of Mayo Beach known as 'Egg Island'. "I'm 38 years old," William Barrio told me 29 April 2020. "I'm the third generation to work this farm, and my family has long history in [Wellfleet]. My mom Kristine Barrio has been out there [ocean] working most of her life farming as well. We had one of the oyster houses for the old railroad. The boats would pull up and unload into sheds and then pack the oysters to be put on the train. I named my company Oyster Lane Shellfish and I cultivate oysters and clams." "As for the effects of COVID on my business...not good...I have made one sale all month. I don't know how long I can do this for. We work 10 hours a week now, and I had to get a job doing construction." Another issue of concern for shellfish farmers is the changing climate and extreme weather. "As far as climate change," William Barrio said, "I don't know; I will have to cross that road when it comes."

September 2019, Erin DeFeo hauls flat rakes on Egg Island where she and her boss Will Barrio are preparing hard-shell clam beds. "I was forced to tell Erin to sign up for unemployment," William Barrio says, 29 April 2020. I can’t afford to work the farm if I have no place to bring the product. As soon as they shut restaurants down that was it for me. I'm really nervous what summer will bring. I don’t think we’re going to be able to bounce back from this and with me being a smaller farm without a wholesale facility I can’t sell to the general public or ship my product to people, and the wholesalers that I deal with shut their doors and don’t know if they’re gonna re-open. This whole [COVID] thing is not good for an oyster Farmer. All the news stations keep talking about the restaurants, but it’s also the people that bring the food to the restaurants. I’m a smaller farm—with all the same overhead and bills—and not much of an income coming in. Daycare is closed, too, so now we’re bouncing our three-year-old back-and-forth trying to juggle her with the work."

A newby to the oyster farming world, Emily Arnold (24) pauses to reflect on the fantastic seascape of Wellfleet while working on her boss Nick Sirucek's grant in September 2019. Emily says she gave up the 9-to-5 grind because she wanted to be outdoors. When not working oysters and in the off-season Emily worked at a small cafe (until COVID) on the Cape. Before COVID, she planned to apply for her own wild oyster picking license. "I also am now beginning the wild [oyster] picking and plan to continue a sustainable and caring work practice with that as long as I have a soul," she says. "Like a lot of individuals on Cape I think you'll find we have given up the soul draining routine for something of more long term beauty that will quench the soul." April, 2020, the cafe Emily Arnold worked for is closed due to COVID. "I did get my wild picking license," Emily Arnold reports, in early May. "I have not been out yet but I hope to in the next week or so. All is well. Just living a very quiet simple life of solitude."

From the National Ocean Service of NOAH: "Oysters are a type of shellfish that live in brackish and saltwater bays, estuaries, and tidal creeks. When oysters reproduce, they spawn tiny larvae that freely navigate the water column until they find an appropriate habitat with a structure to settle on. Once the larvae permanently attach to a surface, they are known as spat. "The successful farming of oysters and other shellfish relies upon successful settlement of larvae onto a selected substrate—typically other oyster shells or ceramic tiles—within a hatchery or wild setting. The tiles or shells that hold the spat are secured to frames or in cages and submerged along an intertidal area or suspended from a long line. From this point forward, the oysters are self-sustaining, filtering all the nutrients they need directly from the water in their environment."

Emily Arnold hauls cages on Nick Sirucek's grant. In love with the sea and the sun and the salty air, Emily quotes a few lines from THE SUN, a poem by Cape Cod poet Mary Oliver. "As the Cape poet, Mary Oliver, said in her poem The Sun: '...such wild love— do you think there is anywhere, in any language, a word billowing enough for the pleasure that fills you, as the sun reaches out, as it warms you as you stand there, empty-handed— or have you too turned from this world— or have you too gone crazy for power, for things?' "

Jim O'Connell (61) grows oysters and hard-shell clams for his O'Connell Shellfish Company operating out of Wellfleet. "[I] graduated college with a mechanical engineering degree, worked for five years, moved here [Wellfleet], got my builder's license," he said, in the fall of 2019, "and then I fell in love with shellfish farming and that's what I'm doing now." "I had some pretty aggressive and ambitious plans regarding planting hard-shell clams," Jim O'Connell said, on 30 April 2020, "and I bought a lot of seed, although I took a BIG hit on my bigger stuff. [The bigger oysters died from 'dermo' disease.] If the markets don't come together [by the end of the summer], I won't have enough storage in my root cellar to store the oysters for the winter." Oysters cannot overwinter in the sea at Wellfleet, because "we have a huge problem with ice here."

Andrew Cummings drives his load and his employees out to his Mayo Beach farm from an access parking lot. Signs posted along the shoreline warn tourists and other vagabonds not to take wild shellfish from the sea (without a permit). The changes due to COVID include loss of markets, collapse of the distribution system, and lack of laborers to plant. April is planting season, and the farm has to be planted and maintained or the crops (of shellfish) wont grow or survive, leading to failed harvests.

Jim O'Connell and James Malpeter 'rake' the sea bed in preparation for laying some hard shell clam nets on a big low tide in September 2019. "Predators include moon snails, whelks, crabs—a whole variety of crabs. Birds. To 'field plant', singular, is really referring to the size of the seed. We bring the seed right from the hatchery to the farm, prep the bottom, plant it under netting. The net will keep the birds off the crop. Gulls and ducks are a problem. Ducks liquify the sand and just eat the clams. Gulls like to eat crabs, so when the crabs aren't around the gulls will pull a clam out of the sand, fly up on the air and drop it on a rock to break it. Gulls move in and eat the crop when there aren't any crabs around that they like to eat."

Jim O'Connell hauls out orange plastic netting used for his hard-shell clam beds. How long has he been working the sea? "Not long enough," he says. "I've been trying to grow hard shell [clams] for about 20 years and I've been trying to grow oysters for about 15 years."

Jim O'Connell and wild oyster picker Sonia Woodman share a high five at the beginning of the 'shift' during a nice low tide off Mayo Beach (background) in September 2019.

Sonia Woodman is a 'wild picker' with a license from the Wellfleet officials to allow her to pick wild oysters along the shore and tidal flats. Here, seen from the deck stairs of one of the posh houses ashore, Sonia pulls around a plastic sled that she throws her catch into before hauling it back to her truck.

Everette Pierce and Wayne Schuman work in waders (hip-boats) in the cold water, September 2019, handing cages up to the Dalby brothers on their pontoon boat off Mayo Beach.

From the window of the Harbormaster's office the harbormaster and his team regulate and oversee all aspects of marine industry as it relates to the watercraft and piers. The harbormaster's office keeps its eyes on the weather, deals with rescues, and manages the coming and going of shellfish farmer's watercraft, but the shellfishing industry is regulated and managed by separate departments and state and federal regulations.

Jacob and Justin Dalby set off from the Wellfleet pier, September 2019, headed to their pontoon boat, afloat in the bay, where they process oysters for market.

Oysters (spat) are susceptible to many predators including: boring sponges, drills (small snails), whelks (drill into the shell and eat them), lobsters, worms, sea stars, parasites, rays and other fish. Blue crabs are amongst the worst. The main predators of oyster larvae are filter feeders (i.e. comb jellies). Mature oysters are consumed by whelks, sea stars and people. Fish, birds, blue crabs and sea otters will eat young oysters.

Seagulls and other water- and shorebirds present only minor problems to shellfishers as long as precautions are taken to protect the vulnerable shellfish beyond a certain size. Gulls will roost and poop all over a boat, so the Dalby brothers have a small decoy bouncing furry cat on the roof of their barge to scare the gulls away. "Some migratory ducks can be real troublesome," says Jim O'Connell. "They play on the puddles and eat the small hard shell clams."

Working on their offshore barge, September 2019, Justin and Jacob Dalby run a rotating harvesting machine that will separate out the oysters that are too small from those ready to be sold.

Shellfish farming can be extremely complex, or profoundly simple. At the simple end are the wild pickers like Sonia Woodman who scour the shore and shallows for legal sized oysters, throw them in a bucket, and process them with minimal equipment. At the complex end are bigger operations where the oyster (or clam) beds are plotted out on a map, or a chart, and everything is coded by date, color markers, and ages of the shellfish, and larger mechanical processing systems are employed for greater economy of scale. Parasites, predators, weather, temperature, the salinity of the sea—and troublesome tourists with low-running propellers—can all make or break a good shellfish harvest.

The Dalby brothers occasionally invite curious tourists out to see their oyster processing operation. Here in September 2019, a young curious tourist climbs down from the roof on a ladder in front of a clear plastic screen that shields the work crew from high winds, rain or sleet.

Jim O'Connell and his worker James Malpeter rake the sea bed on Egg Island in September 2019, preparing the ground for some hard shell clam beds. Is it hard work? Is he worried about climate change? "You never know what the future is going to bring," he says, "but I'm good for now." "I love this planet we live on," says Jim O'Connell, another day, working through a beautiful sunset and a killer low tide. "It doesn't get old [out here]."

A shellfish buyer arrives after sunset at Wellfleet pier, fall 2019, loading up with fresh catch harvested by one of the town's shellfishers. Due to COVID, the entire distribution system collapsed in March 2020. Everything ground to a halt. "Every summer resident fled New York City and came here," says Captain Andrew Cummings on 28 April 2020. "Our grocery stores are empty of food. When the weather is good, its like summertime on Cape Cod—so many people—but this is only April. They talked about closing the bridges, but they never did."

A schooner sails across Cape Cod Bay at sunset on a big high tide. When the tide is in and high, infrastructure such as racks and cages, or clam beds, cannot be seen without being marked by buoys or flags or other markers.