It is a major discovery. On leaving for work last Friday, Mathieu Naslin certainly did not expect to find a mollusc of this size. While walking, this oyster farmer from Talmont-Saint-Hilaire, in Vendée, came across a huge oyster, weighing 1.440 kilograms for 25 centimeters.
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“I was working in the channel and while walking, I felt something at my foot. I picked it up and it was this big oyster”, says the employee of Viviers de la Guittière. Mathieu Naslin, who has worked for this oyster farm for eight years, claims to have never made such a discovery.
In April, another mollusk of exceptional size (1.3 kilos for 27 centimeters) was discovered in a nearby oyster farm, in this sector of the Atlantic coast located near Sables d’Olonne.
“It’s extremely rare,” explained Mathieu Naslin. “I have no doubt that in the open sea there are other oysters of this size, but in our beds, it was unexpected. The salinity level sometimes drops considerably because we are near a watershed which discharges fresh water in our channel. This limits the development of oysters.”
The oyster, which has since been returned to the water, was nicknamed “Georgette” in tribute to an employee of the oyster farm, who retired at the end of July, who bore this nickname. “She was a bit like the matriarch of society,” says Mathieu Naslin. The Georgette oyster would be between 13 and 15 years old. “A normal oyster grows about 3 centimeters per year and remains 3 years in the water. But it has been proven that an oyster can live between 35 and 60 years, we estimate the age thanks to the streaks of the shell” , said the oyster farmer.
Georgette is edible, but there is no question for the oyster farm to market it. “There are lovers of very large oysters but for us, the goal is to keep it alive and why not make it grow even more. It’s a trophy”, explained Mathieu Naslin.
“There are quite a few people who offered to buy it for us. As a joke, our boss told us that it would not go below 2,000 euros. But even for 30,000 euros, we would not sell it” , he concludes.
With this specimen, the oyster farmer from Vendée is not far from approaching the world record for an oyster, held to date by a 1.62 kilo oyster discovered in Denmark in 2019.
