Here is a wonderful short video from 1993, which visits Bivalve and Shellpile, the last of New Jersey’s oystering communities, near Port Norris, where the Maurice River meets the Delaware Bay. The oystering industry was once highly profitable. Port Norris was the wealthiest municipality per capita in the state of New Jersey and was among the wealthiest in the country during the early 20th century. The industry collapsed in the late 1950s when an oyster pathogen killed 90% of the oysters. Today, Bivalve is the home of the Bayshore Discovery Center and the home port for the restored oyster dragger, the schooner A.J. Meerwald, the official tall ship of New Jersey.

New Jersey’s oystering communities