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Galleries / Food & Drink

A Briny Business

Photography Lawson BuilderPhotos 20Issue February 2025
Lowcountry Cups.Trey McMillan motors through the ACE Basin, where his Lowcountry Oyster Co. farms select oysters.Trey McMillan, whose Lowcountry Oyster Co. farming operation spans 3,000 cages across 16 acres in the ACE Basin, grows about one million oysters per year that are sold directly to restaurants and consumers across the Southeast. Bullish on the industry and local select oysters, he’s building a $6.4-million processing and distribution center to expand production.A Briny BusinessA Briny BusinessOyster shuckers at work at the Varn & Platt Canning Co. in Bluffton circa 1913.10-year old Sephie, pictured with her mother at the Maggioni Canning Co. in Port Royal in 1912, is said to have shucked six pots of oysters a day.Henry, also 10, did “five pots... a day,” working for the Maggioni cannery before and after school and on Saturdays.A circa-1870 stereograph of African American women selling oysters and fish in Charleston.Oysters growing in mesh bags.Upon maturity, select oysters growing in mesh bags are harvested and taken back to the LowCo facility in Green Pond.LowCo’s Lowcountry Cups are grown from seed stock called “spat” in the nursery.Once they are large enough, they are sorted and placed into cages to mature, which can take anywhere from 12 to 16 months.The harvested selects pass through the grader, which sorts them by size. The holes get progressively bigger as the shells tumble down and fall into bins with similarly sized oysters.A Briny BusinessA Briny BusinessDressed So Fine: A selection of LowCo’s Lowcountry Cups.Barrier Island Oysters’ Sea Clouds.McMillan says LowCo’s expansion will increase the company’s production by 300 percent and bring at least 30 new jobs to the region.A Briny Business

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A Briny Business: Learn about the historic ebbs and flows of the local oyster industry
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