Compare And Contrast The Drake's Bay Oyster Company

Hannah Dedmore
Prof. David Holper
English 1A
22 Sept. 2017
Drake’s Bay Oyster Company vs. The Point Reyes National Seashore
Family businesses are an important factor in pulling the community together. The book The Oyster War, by Summer Brennan writes about the conflict between Point Reyes National Seashore and the Drake’s Bay Oyster Company. The area that surrounds the Drake's Bay Oyster Company, and the land it rests on, all have been pronounced a wilderness. However, to be considered a wilderness, the land must be only visited by man. There have been farms on the land for almost 100 years, and they pronounced the land as a national wilderness in 1962. The land has not been the proper definition of what a wilderness is considered to be in

Before the company was owned by the Lunny family, it was known as the Johnson Oyster Company. Although the name is self-explanatory, I’ll still mention that it was operated by the Johnson family. The Johnson family, Charlie and Makiko, managed the farm for a couple of decades, using an old Japanese technique to farm the oysters. The technique was brought over and taught to Charlie by Makiko, who had traveled across the world to be his bride. The Drake’s Bay Oyster Company came to be in 2005 when Kevin lunny purchased the farm. As you can see, the farm has been owned by families and used for a fairly large amount of

They are a family business, and it’s their primary source of work. The Oyster Farm also holds jobs for many people, “‘The 10-year extension of the Drake’s Bay Oyster Company’s lease will preserve 30 jobs at the last remaining oyster farm cannery on the West Coast while making sure that the ecology of the estuary is protected’” (qtd. In Brennan). As being the family job, once they’re moved, they will be jobless. Even if they manage to scrape up a last-minute job, it’s unlikely that it will be a decent job for such little time after they move. Even so, it’s hard to get someone to hire you after spending years and years putting all of your time into your Oyster Company. After putting all of your effort into your effort into that, you are forced to move, and start over. The only other places that the oyster farm could’ve moved were surrounded by competition or not the right conditions. Where they had been for years was perfect. Extending the lease wouldn’t have hurt anybody, and it only needed to be temporary. At the very least, extend the lease a few years a chance to let the Drake’s Bay Oyster Company prepare to move. Sure, they had time to prepare beforehand when they knew the lease was coming to an end, but they fully expected to be able to renew the lease. Because of this, there was no preparation to move and restart their life