<Begin Segment 8>

TI: So when you started oyster farming, it seemed like a very labor intensive operation.

GN: It still is.

TI: That's what I was going to ask you. So how has automation changed oyster farming? Because when you look at, I talk to the farmers now, they say, "Oh, farming is so much easier now than it was back in the '30s and the '40s." What about oyster farming? Has it changed very much?

GN: Oh, sure it has. You don't have the hand labor. You don't have to go out in the middle of the night and pick oysters. But more and more...

TI: So now they have machines that scoop up the oysters?

GN: You go at a highwater, which is in the daytime, and even if you have to go out in the night, you have big lights that floods the whole bay ahead of you, and GPS, you can take you right to where you want to go, and fancy equipment to dredge the oyster scow made out of all aluminum, it cost eight hundred, nine hundred thousand dollars. That's the difference. And the price of oysters reflects it.

TI: Because it's a lot cheaper now... is it more expensive or less?

GN: More expensive.

TI: Oh, because the equipment's so much more expensive.

GN: Sure, seed's expensive, diesel oil is expensive, license is...

TI: But their labor costs must have gone down, because before, you probably had...

GN: Labor's gone up, because you're still opening them by hand, remember? [Laughs]

TI: Well, so talk about that. So that was, you showed me the, kind of the processing area, where after you load all the oysters on the scows and then bring them in here, barge 'em in, then you'd bring 'em to the processing plant. You have these long rooms where the oysters come down, and in the old days, people had to individually shuck them, throw the shells in the bottom and they would have the oysters and they would then grade them and put them in jars. How... the same way?

GN: Same way, exactly the same. [Laughs]

TI: So they couldn't automate the shucking oysters?

GN: You can't automate that.

TI: So no one in the world has figured out how to automate shucking of oysters?

GN: You can freeze 'em quickly and open 'em up, but it does something to the tissues of the oyster. We tried electronics, used audio waves and all that kind of...

TI: Not even the Japanese with their robotics? They haven't figured that out yet?

GN: [Laughs] No.

TI: I would think that they might have figured that out. Not yet.

GN: They haven't done it yet.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2014 Densho. All Rights Reserved.