Ostras: overdose of oysters...

I’ve woken everyday this week to breakfast looking at the rising sun glinting off blue and clear waters surrounding Florianopolis …this is the city with the best quality of life in Brazil: the best and the safest; the island has to be one of the choicest places on earth to live; beautiful people, beautiful climate, fantastic food, gob-smacking scenery, beaches to die for and lots and lots of oysters! [Owsblog orgasmic obsession...]Basically it’s a haven for the locals, tourists, surfers, nature lovers etc and guys like me that are forced to come here - having to endure all this - for the sake of work :-)

The oyster farming here began 20-odd years ago in a bid to save the livelihoods of the local fishermen. Crassostrea gigas is not only tasty but produces a good yield and is 'environmentally friendly': "molluscs, as filter-feeders, reduce the cloudiness of water, increasing the penetration of light and thus boosting the productivity of that area,"

"[The activity also] strengthens biodiversity, because the oyster culture structures host a variety of small invertebrates and a chain of animals that develop together,"

...says Claudio Blacher, oceanographer: Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC)

More simply put (by a local oyster farmer):"This is good because it’s something that does not pollute nature. On the contrary, you have a fresh oyster, just harvested from the sea. The oyster is nutritional and can only do you good."

Spent yesterday afternoon travelling down much of the west coast of the island (from Sambaqui down to beyond Caieira da Barra do Sul for those that know where I mean) - much of the journey on cobbled roads - where, as this guide says, there are many "fisherman villages that seem to have stopped in time" (really they're just strips of small houses and huts along the roadside sitting right on the water's edge). Lovely...