When Jimmy Bloom eased the 52-foot, 36-ton Grace P. Lowndes into the Norwalk dock of Norm Bloom & Son L.L.C., her deck was piled with 500 bushels of oysters.
The sturdy boat dates to 1931 and Jimmy, 27, is the third generation Bloom to pilot her.
The Grace P. Lowndes was met by several of Bloom & Son”™s 50 employees. A clockwork ballet of worker, winch and oyster began. The entire Bloom & Son operation is geared to moving, not storing, product: oysters ”” by far the company”™s main product ”” then clams, then lobsters. “If there are no orders, I don”™t catch,” Norm Bloom said.
The oysters are sorted into keepers, shells and throwbacks and in the sorting ”” sometimes done out on the water; this day in a cooled, cement-floored room dockside ”” the industry perpetually rejuvenates itself.
The sunny October day, the picture-perfect Norwalk harbor and the evident bounty of the Long Island Sound could be mistaken for a simple business model: head out, load up, sell big.
The reality instead is of a vital sea-farming industry, according to Norm. Some companies maintain marina presences, others are boat-owners who contract for dock facilities. Some oyster beds are owned; some are leased from the state Department of Agriculture; Bloom & Son”™s tends and harvests both types. Norm”™s brothers remain in the business, as well: Bobby owns Bloom Bros. and Steven owns K.B., two of the 10 oyster outfits operating out of Norwalk harbor.
Bloom acknowledged the cost of Fairfield County waterfront, saying, “It”™s hard to have a location.” His is the former Lovejoy Oyster Co., bought in the 1960s by Norm Sr. “I do work with guys who just have a boat.”
Norm and Jimmy do not hesitate in saying they love their work. Said Norm, “It”™s the outdoors. Running boats. Working on boats. Growing things. Growing a product.” Any boatyard is something of a machine shop and Bloom & Son fits the bill perfectly. Both he and Jimmy design and build the boats”™ specialized equipment.
As a farmer tends fields, the oysters are given underwater beds of sun-dried shells to cling to; then they grow their own shells. The anchor shells are dried at a second Bloom & Sons facility, on the Quinnipiac River near New Haven, a 3.5-hour boat trip that at least one company boat makes every day. The oysters are monitored for size and many will see the deck of a Bloom boat several times before making the cut sizewise: above 3 inches.
“A lot of people don”™t realize how much farming is involved,” Jimmy said. He meets regularly with the interstate commission tasked with shellfish management.
Jimmy works 13-hour days, six days a week. He has been harvesting oysters since he was 5.
“I love my work ”” dealing with Mother Nature every day,” he said. “It”™s good, seeing the rewards you get after the years you spend building a crop.”
The crop”™s sustainability was threatened, Jimmy said, by a now-tabled state move to allow the harvest of oysters smaller than 3 inches. “Our fear was that it would jeopardize the sustainability of the oyster industry in Connecticut,” he said. And as Norm observed, “We”™re one of the last industries still operating on the sound.”
As with any farming, nature can be wrathful.
Sandy (2012) and Irene (2011) and the March nor”™easter of 2010 blew through the oyster beds, necessitating rebuilding. “The March storm in 2010 was the worst,” Norm said. “The water was too cold. There was no food, so when the oysters got hurt they pretty much died.” Sandy, too, hammered the beds, but some benefitted from proximity to the region”™s many small islands, which served to blunt the superstorm”™s energy.
Norm Bloom said, “Basically, I am the manager of a resource and the better I manage that resource the better I do. More oysters, more jobs. The industry really began its comeback in the ”™70s. Since then, we”™ve had die-offs and we”™ve had storms. Because we keep a volume out there, it keeps coming back. The importance of this industry is not what you sell, but what you put back.”
Jimmy”™s grandfather Norm Sr., who was once part of the still-thriving Tallmadge Bros. Oyster Co. and who died in 1989, is the Norm Bloom of the company name. The son, also Norm, actually founded the company soon after his father”™s death, honoring his father with top billing. Norm eventually brought his son Jimmy and daughter Jeanne aboard: Jimmy on the water and Jeanne handling the hundreds of pages of monthly environmental data: times, temperatures, lots, sanitation, refrigeration. Said Jeanne, “I go out in the storms; that”™s the best time for me.”
The industry thrives only because of crop-building. “The important thing is to keep the product out on the water so it keeps regrowing,” Norm said.
Bloom runs 15 boats between Greenwich and Stonington, with the main oyster farming done between Greenwich and Branford. That said, “You get good ones out of Guilford,” Norm said.
Norwalk, of course, is known for its oysters; its charity-themed annual oyster festival attracts thousands. This year, Bloom & Son supplied the oysters for the Coast Guard Auxiliary raw bar at the festival.
NEXT WEEK: The lobster problem.
