Apalachicola Oysters and the Battle for a Florida Bay

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In “Apalachicola Oysters and the Battle for a Florida Bay,” Gravy producer Betsy Wallace takes listeners to Franklin County, Florida to find out if a new tourist development could be the biggest threat to a decades-long, $30 million investment in the Apalachicola Bay Oyster Fishery Restoration.

Franklin County is tucked into Florida’s Forgotten Coast, a stretch of the panhandle known for white sand beaches, off-shore fishing, and the iconic Apalachicola Bay oyster. It is distinctly Old Florida; there are family-owned seafood restaurants next to mom-and-pop bait shops. You won’t see a high-rise hotel until the next county over. When the black bears get hot in the sticky heat of July, they lumber across Highway 98 to swim with the jellyfish in the salty Gulf Coast water.

This area is home to one of the few remaining working shorelines in North Florida. For about a hundred years, up until a devastating fishery crash in 2013, the oyster industry powered Franklin County’s economy. At its peak in 2012, the industry brought in over $9 million and employed about 2,500 locals in the small Florida panhandle towns of Eastpoint, Apalachicola, Carrabelle, and Panacea. In 2013 the oyster industry crashed and took the local economy down with it.

Now, more than a decade later, join Wallace as she digs into the restoration of the Apalachicola Bay oyster reefs and a newly proposed (and highly divisive) large-scale tourist resort. Will the Forgotten Coast stay forgotten long enough for the seafood industry to recover and provide stable, well-paying jobs for the next generation? Or will tourism and real estate development finally take over, as it has up and down the Florida coast?

In this episode, Wallace talks to Josh Norman, who grew up in an oystering family and is a marine biologist turned VP of the locally owned Bayside Coffee; Charles Pennycutt, owner of Fisherman’s Choice Bait and Tackle; Paddy’s Raw Bar restaurateur Patrick Sparks; Florida State University scientist Dr. Sandra Brooke; and oyster farmer Xochitl Bevera.

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