Bryan Rackley stood at the Kimball House host stand looking out into the dining room filled with second graders from his son’s elementary school. They were at the Decatur restaurant to learn about oysters, particularly the work he and his Kimball House partners do with Shiny Dimes, the oyster company and aquafarm they own along the Florida panhandle.
Questions from the two classes in attendance that day ranged from asking how oysters grow and what they eat to Rackley’s favorite chore at the farm. He found the kids’ excitement and curiosity about oysters – and why people like eating the knotty-shelled bivalves – invigorating.
“Marine sciences are important, and I could see their little wheels turning as I answered questions. It was cool to see these kids engaged,” Rackley said, who brought out props from the oyster room at Kimball House to help explain his answers.
At full maturity, one adult oyster can filter up to 1.3 gallons of seawater every hour–or nearly 30 gallons a day–removing algae, undissolved fine particles, and organic and inorganic pollutants from the water. Rackley grabbed a five-gallon bucket to demonstrate to the children the enormous amount of water one oyster can filter over 24 hours.
Rackley’s own curiosity about oysters led to Shiny Dimes. After multiple field trips to various farms over the years on behalf of Kimball House and reading as much as possible about oysters, oyster habitats, and how much oysters benefit the surrounding environment, founding Shiny Dimes felt like the next natural step.
Rackley wanted better tag dates for the oysters the restaurant served. Tag dates list the original harvest date and location. Oysters have a shelf life of up to three weeks, so the closer to harvest date, the better an oyster tastes. With a year-round growing season in Florida, Shiny Dimes can harvest oysters as soon as they reach maturity.
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“I didn’t want Shiny Dimes to compete with other farmers, I just wanted to be part of the story,” Rackley said. For now, Kimball House remains Shiny Dimes’ biggest customer, with some of its oysters sold for distribution to other restaurants through Evans Meat & Seafood, including Talat Market, Six Feet Under, and W. H. Stiles Fish Camp in Atlanta and Husk in Savannah, Henrietta Red in Nashville, and Peche in New Orleans.
Shiny Dimes can grow as many as 100,000 Virginica or Atlantic oysters a year from seed or spat per acre. The company currently leases two one-and-a-half-acre plots in Spring Creek, FL, on Oyster Bay, along with an unused plot 32 miles south in Alligator Point.
On average, Kimball House customers consume between 600,000 to 700,000 oysters each year, many of which now come from Shiny Dimes. The farm’s oysters take six to eight months to reach maturity, grown in black mesh bags floating on top of the water, called intensive farming, meant to speed growth and produce higher quality oysters for eating on the half shell.
But a lot can happen during those precious growing months on an intensive aquafarm like Shiny Dimes. Last year, the farm lost 70,000 maturing oysters to Hurricane Helene, forcing the company to purchase another 40,000 oyster seeds from a hatchery near Tampa. It was a big hit for the fledgling oyster operation, founded by Rackley and his Kimball House partners Miles Macquarrie, Jesse Smith, and Matt Christison in 2019
The foursome only harvested their first batch of Shiny Dimes oysters in 2022.
“We try to grow on the farm the same way we grow at the restaurant. Big leaps are tricky. There’s a big margin for error. So we always try to stage our growth to be more manageable. You have to work slow and smart,” said Rackley. “Growing is mostly management and monitoring and timing it all.”
Starting in mid-April, when the weather and water are warmer, oysters grow incredibly fast. Rackley said they stagger the growth cycle to ensure the entire farm isn’t market-ready at the same time or end up with oysters in August that are huge and covered in barnacles.
Harvest time sees Rackley and his partners hoisting heavy bags of oysters from the water onto their small shallow-bottomed boat. Oysters are rinsed, sorted, and inspected by hand to ensure shells are tightly closed, not dried out, or producing a strong odor, indicating spoilage. Empty bags are then thoroughly rinsed, reseeded, tagged, and put back into the water.
It’s hard work, but skipping steps can be costly.
“Every time we harvest it feels like this incredible feat. There’s a pretty steep learning curve, especially for a bunch of city boys,” Rackley said. “Thankfully we have oyster farmers next to us who can check on things and have been so helpful and great resources. I learn new things every time I’m there.”
Rackley asked the kids attending his oyster talk at Kimball House if they knew anything about keystone species. Hands quickly shot up, leading him to explain the role oysters play as a marine keystone species.
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As a keystone species, oysters disproportionately impact the environment around them. Removing oysters from that environment upsets the delicate ecosystem these bivalves help maintain, including building up natural reefs to curb beach erosion and filtering thousands of gallons of seawater daily.
During the filtration process, oysters feed off phytoplankton, making their entire lifecycle self-sustainable and farming low-maintenance. By consuming phytoplankton, oysters keep the ecosystem in check, allowing more sunlight to reach microscopic plants and organisms living in the water. These microscopic plants and organisms attract other marine life to the area.
But the good these oysters do for the marine environment doesn’t end when they leave the warm waters of Oyster Bay and the Florida Gulf Coast. Kimball House collects hundreds of thousands of discarded oyster shells yearly in a special receptacle beside the restaurant. Once full, shells are hauled away and dumped back into the ocean as part of the continual reef restoration work along the Georgia coast by the Department of Natural Resources.
“What drove me to start Shiny Dimes was getting my hands dirty and learning something new,” Rackley said. “I have so much more respect for nature because of Shiny Dimes and appreciate the physical and economic investment of oyster farmers.”
Talking with a group of inquisitive second graders about oysters felt like a full-circle moment for Rackley.
“It’s very seldom that I get to go to Shiny Dimes with my son but he’s experienced Oyster Bay and the hard work,” Rackley said. “He knows it’s important and has heard me talk about the types of different species in these coastal areas and what oysters and other animals do out there. I would farm oysters full-time if given the opportunity.”
