January 25, 2016— The plot Annie McNamara takes us to first is Skip Bennett’s newest project: He’s growing a crop of oysters here that he calls Aunt Dotties, named for his great aunt, who loved the Red Sox, kept lobster traps well into her 70s, and lived year round (without electricity) in the cottage at Saquish’s very tip—a piece of land that has been in Skip’s family since the 1600s. It’s here that Annie parks the car and we get out. From where we’re standing, we can see Skip several hundred meters out on the mudflats, mucking around in a sweatshirt and rubber waders and picking through large, flat wire cages.
Inside those wire cages are about a million Aunt Dottie oysters. They spend their whole lives there, never touching the mud; in nature, oysters will nestle down, covering and insulating themselves with mud. Of Island Creek’s three oyster crops—Aunt Dottie, Island Creek, and Row 34—only the Island Creeks are grown that way, or “bottom-planted.” (The Row 34s are grown on the same plot of land as the Island Creeks, but using the same “tray” method as the Aunt Dotties.) Here on Saquish, the cages, woolly with seaweed, protect the Aunt Dotties from crabs and birds, and sit in the open air all day until the tide rolls in over them.