At a dock along Chatham County’s Bull River, Perry and Laura Solomon repeat what has become a familiar routine over the last eight months.
Bundled in waterproof coveralls, winter coats and stocking caps, the couple boards their 21-foot Carolina Skiff – the same vessel Perry’s late father used to lead dolphin-viewing tours around Tybee Island – at Savannah Boathouse Marina on a cold January afternoon.
Laura pushes away from the dock, cueing her husband and business partner to open the throttle. The skiff skips along the choppy river beneath a brilliant blue sky.
Perry eventually guides the boat around a final bend, flushing a flock of a pelicans from the shell-encrusted shore just as four long lines of what resemble floating violin cases come into view.
These containers – 1,200 in all – hold the crop from Georgia’s first open-water oyster farm.
Submerged baskets attached to the containers contain carefully cultivated mollusks at varying stages of maturity.
They started as 100,000 fingernail-sized “seed,” or baby Eastern oysters, purchased in the summer from the University of Georgia Marine Extension and Sea Grant’s Shellfish Research Laboratory.