Of a brilliant, translucent, captivating green. Very fragrant to the nose, savoury, and mellow-flavoured. They are natural, healthy, non-contaminating, and beneficial for the environment, true miniature eco-fighters. They were raised, or cultivated, depending on your point of view, by a group of determined mussel farmers from the Gulf of La Spezia and made famous in the 19th century because they were loved by Shelley and Byron (hence the name Golfo dei Poeti). The village of Portovenere, set between the port of La Spezia and the Cinque Terre, has not only fascinated the tormented hearts of English poets; scientists of the calibre of Lazzaro Spallanzani chose it as a destination for naturalistic study, between the sea and the Mediterranean scrub. The first to promote the quality of local oysters was the Swiss biologist Arturo Issel. According to him, the closed basin, the presence of freshwater submarine pools, and the influx of small pure streams were perfectly suited to the needs of the mussel. This opinion was seconded by another Italian biologist, Davide Carazzi, ready to support the initiative of a sector entrepreneur, the tarantino Emanuele Albano. The epic of the Porto Venere oysters began in the wake of the unification of Italy. Issel and Carazzi were accurate prophets: the first cooperatives were born at the beginning of the twentieth century, and before World War II, more than three hundred Porto Venere families were engaged in oyster farming. This example of an expanding local virtuous microeconomy was reduced to a minimum in 1973 by the explosion of the polluted Campanian mussel scandal, when the cholera vibrio scare brought a stop to the consumption of shellfish throughout Italy. Four years later, law 192 imposed the relaying-purification obligation and began the slow reconstruction of citizens’ trust in mussel farming, long delegated to French production. It took thirty years before the Ligurian Fishing & Environment Observatory started experimenting with oyster farming, based on which it continued to prosper freely among the waves of the Gulf of Poets, and another ten before starting commercialisation. The first believer was a passionate student of marine biology, Paolo Varrella, today’s Vice President of the Cooperativa Mitilicoltori Associati del Golfo (Mussel Farmers’ Cooperative Association of the Gulf), which has seventy members, two thirds of whom are dedicated to farming both oysters and mussels. He would tell the secrets of the green oysters, “different from all the others – concave or flat – because they feed almost exclusively on the local phytoplankton, which gives them green nuances, a fragrant imprint, and marked richness of taste. To provide some colour, in the claires – French oyster beds – they sow the Blue Navicula, which come to us naturally.” Beautiful, good, and healthy: “The Golfo dei Poeti (Gulf of Poets) reaches 39 per thousand salinity in summer, and never falls below 37: this concentration translates into taste and has a disinfectant function. In addition, here the oysters grow without food and produce no waste. We monitor constantly: oysters and mussels are well below the legal limits for quantity of bacteria even before the relaying process. That is, they could be eaten as soon as they are removed from the sea as was once done… For this we devised the word “merroir,” which defines our privileged marine terroir.” That is not all. Professor Pane of Genoa is about to publish a study showing that the La Spezia oysters contain a quarter of microplastics compared to the oceanic ones, and half of those of the Mediterranean. Because the sea of Porto Venere is particularly clear, there is less suspended sediment, and therefore fewer microparticles. This harvest of blessed coincidences translates into an annual production of four hundred quintals (plus thirty thousand quintals of mussels), with hotels and quality venues all competing to include them in menus and tastings. Last but not least, oysters – all of them – represent an admirable example of ecological balance. To build the shell, they need calcium carbonate, which they process from the sea’s carbonate ions. The water, in turn, takes CO2 from the atmosphere to re-establish the dynamic balance. Professor Giampietro Ravagna of Ca ‘Foscari is about to publish a study based on stoichiometric calculations, which show that oysters absorb half of their weight in CO2 incorporated in the shell, while other molluscs absorb around 30%. Not surprisingly, the battle against ocean acidification also passes through projects such as “Oyster gardening”, oyster crops (obviously not intended for human consumption) planted in American marinas.
