Tidal TRADITION

YOU CAN’T TALK Connecticut oysters without talking Copps Island.

Chef Matt Storch, guest editor for this month’s issue, graciously introduced Saugatuck magazine to Norman Bloom, aka Norm, the man who started Copps Island Oysters over three decades ago. Bloom has been supplying Storch with his freshest catch for a while now, and in 2022, the two men came together to start the Copps Island Oyster Shacks (with locations in Norwalk and Stratford) and Oyster Truck.

But Bloom’s history with the mollusks goes back to his childhood, working with his father, Norm Sr., and uncle Hilliard as they began recultivating Connecticut’s abandoned shellfish beds. In 1972, the elder generation of Blooms purchased Tallmadge Brothers Oyster Company.

In 1994, the younger Bloom decided to venture out on his own and founded Copps Island Oysters by Norm Bloom and Son, LLC. What started with a single boat and the help of friends Gary Dillion, Henry Backer and the Stabel family blossomed into one of the largest oyster farms on the East Coast.

In the 31 years since, Bloom has found immense success, supplying restaurants and fine retailers across the country with Connecticut oysters—all with his children Jimmy and Jeanne by his side.

DEEP ROOTS

Copps Island Oyster Company has fishing grounds all along the Connecticut coast, where Bloom, son Jimmy and his team cycle and shift the oysters, allowing them to mature out on the sea floor for several years before harvesting. This process imbues them with “the robust qualities of a wild oyster and the sustainability of a farmed product.”

Copps Island has also gone beyond just harvesting by partnering with local nonprofits like Harbor Watch to monitor water quality and safety, establishing a hatchery to support the next set of farmed baby oysters and teaming up with other fisheries across the state to share boats and labor.

Once a year in early July, just before the natural oyster spawn, Copps Island takes the recycled and dried shells they’ve been gathering on land and replants them out in the open water to provide wild oyster larvae shells to latch onto and enhance the natural oyster reproduction cycle.

In many ways, Bloom is not only a fisherman but a steward for the waters and ecosystems on which Copps Island Oyster Company depends and an advocate for this time- honored Connecticut tradition.

Photographer Andrea Carson spent a morning out on Long Island Sound aboard one of the Copps Island fishing boats. Her photographs on the preceding pages show us the work that goes into catching, sorting and cleaning the thousands of pounds of shellfish that the employees of Copps Island Oyster Company process every single day.

By Colleen Crowley