RECESSION IN Europe has struck the oyster beds nestling under the Slieve Mish mountains in Tralee Bay.
The oyster harvest has finished this weekend in what has been one the most difficult seasons for produce destined for top Parisian restaurants.
The Tralee beds offer the country’s only disease-free, naturally reproducing oysters. Brought back from near extinction as a result of overfishing 30 years ago, the Tralee Bay oysters have been thriving and are sold to restaurants rather than supermarkets, because of their excellent quality.
The fine summer produced an excellent harvest but it is the harsh winter of recession in the top restaurants of Amsterdam and Paris that has meant sales have dipped below 200 tonnes for the first time in many years.
“Markets are difficult, to say the least. Consumption is down overall in Europe,” said Denis O’Shea, manager of the Tralee Bay Oyster Fisheries in Fenit.
Normally, well over 300 tonnes are sold to order, but this year sales have suffered.
Some 78 boats are licensed to dredge the bay for oysters and in the short two-month season up to Christmas some 200 people are involved in the industry. In early November the oyster fishery was forced to shut down for a fortnight after oysters from Denmark flooded the European restaurant market.
Tralee Bay oysters are renowned for their reproducing vigour and they are free of the Bonamia disease that have affected other flat oyster beds from introduced stock.
They are also free of the diseases that sometimes afflict the Pacific farmed variety.
Overfishing and oyster wars between rival fishermen in the late 1970s led to a collapse in the fishery. However, strict conservation and a 1981 fisheries order has meant a resurgence for the oyster industry.
Ongoing measures to conserve the oysters mean that only the larger molluscs are harvested.