Sandy's Damage Underneath The Sea, By The Eyes Of Oyster Farmers

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  Norman Bloom requires his boat out to meet his son, Jimmy, whose boat is idling more than the company's oyster beds, about a mile offshore from Norwalk. They fear that the waves and the turbulence could have suffocated the oysters beneath silt. They could have been banged all around, which would break them. And they could have just cracked open and died, Jimmy fears.

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  Jimmy Bloom lowers two cages with rakes on the front to drag the bottom of the sound, about 30 feet below. Then he brings it up and dumps it on deck to check out the oysters. "You know, if the storm hit, you will see the shells will be all polished or the oysters could be all gapped. So it would be nothing at all to drop 80 to 90 % of your oysters," Norman Bloom says, wanting on.

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  What they pull up is discouraging. Normally, 30 seconds underneath water would deliver up a cage total of primarily healthier oysters. This time, Jimmy Bloom pulls up a cage that is barely a single - third complete. And it truly is haul is a mix of broken, chipped, meatless oysters.

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  They're not out here to farm, they are just here to survey. So the Bloom males pump seawater onto the boat and wash the shells back into the water.

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  The reduction will not place them out of corporations, but it will make daily life tougher and leaner as they attempt to the two preserve up with demand and rebuild what was destroyed. "We just pick up the pieces, start sorting the mess out, and move on. Take it from there. Not considerably you can do about it, you just go to function the up coming day," Jimmy Bloom says.

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Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy wrapped up a publish Hurricane Sandy news briefing earlier this week by speaking about sewage discharges into Prolonged Island Sound. "Suffice to say in the fast time getting, no one ought to eat the clams or oysters," he explained.

Which is right. Mainly because of water quality issues, the state place a short-term quit to oyster farming, but that's generally a brief - expression thing and it comes about relatively routinely soon after a large storm.

But Hurricane Sandy could have had a far additional lasting impact on some in the oyster marketplace in terms of pure destruction of the oyster's fragile habitat.

Norman Bloom and his son, Jimmy Bloom are oyster farmers at Norm Bloom and Son in Norwalk, Conn. Their household has been raising oysters for a few generations now on 2,000 underwater acres of oysters in Prolonged Island Sound. And, on Wednesday, two days immediately after the storm, I tagged along as the Blooms had been last but not least able to get out on the water to assess the harm.

Verify out the slideshow over to see what they located.

Cohen is a reporter with WNPR in Connecticut.

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