Why are oysters special to me? It’s not the taste or the pureness, but it’s the fond youth memories. This picture is from 1999 and it shows my father and I. It’s on-board our oyster fishing ship named “Hugo Senior”(named after my grandfather ).
I’m 8 years old in this picture, but I can still remember those lovely summers. Wearing shorts and rubber clogs, sweeping the deck and thinking it was an important job. During those summer months we fished empty mussel shells and dropped these on our most sheltered oyster banks. The small oyster larvae would nestle themselves in the mussel shell beds and use the calcium to start building their own oyster shell. Next year the oysters would be bigger and we would fish them up and move them to different oyster banks. These banks had more currents and therefore more food to be filtered out of the water.
Every summer during the holidays I could join my dad and uncles and we would fish shells and move oysters. It are fond memories and valuable lessons like: don’t panic when your dad gives you the steering wheel and leaves to weld something in the hold… or don’t step on a cable because you will catapult into the air when the nets come in 
Nowadays my dad has retired and I’m in engineering. But those fond memories are the reason why Emergo Designs is specialized in oyster knives. It’s amazing to combine my heritage and my passion for making into one amazing product. Please join me this week when we launch the Hugo, named after my grandfather and those proud memories.
