01 / METHOD
Farm without dredging
Cultivate and harvest without dragging heavy equipment across the bay floor.
Regenerative oyster farming on Willapa Bay
Oysters that leave the bay better than we found it.
Hand-farmed without dredging. Restoring eelgrass. Preserving the native Olympia oyster. Carrying forward two of Willapa Bay’s historic oyster legacies.
The Willapa Wild Way
Sustainability maintains. Regeneration restores.
We farm to improve the living systems that make remarkable oysters possible. The method connects oyster quality, habitat health and the future of a working bay.
02 / HABITAT
Restore living habitat
Improve the conditions that support eelgrass, sediment health and marine life.
03 / CONTINUITY
Preserve the native oyster
Willapa Wild will never sell Olympia oysters as a commercial product. We preserve, promote and grow them to help regenerate their presence in Willapa Bay.
04 / PEOPLE
Build meaningful livelihoods
Create stable, skilled work in which people can learn, contribute and take pride.
05 / COMMUNITY
Strengthen the community
Support a working coastal economy, preserve public connection to the bay and help Oysterville remain a living place.
What you experience
An oyster shaped by its place.
Clean water, time, tide and careful handling allow every oyster to reach its own full potential. The reward is not sameness. It is a more vivid expression of Willapa Bay in every shell.
Briny, sweet, mineral or delicate, each oyster arrives with its own character and a transparent story of how it was raised.
Every oyster is unique. Our work is to give each one the conditions to become fully itself.
From the working bay
See how the work is done.
The tide, the crew and the decisions that shape what remains after harvest.
Films from Willapa BayStewardship across generations
We did not begin these stories. We are responsible for what happens next.
Willapa Wild is the present steward of two distinct Willapa Bay oyster legacies: a family farming lineage reaching back to William Clark’s arrival in 1850 and the historic Oysterville property that began as the Sherwood Cannery.
1850
Stony Point Oyster Company
William Clark arrived at Shoalwater Bay in 1850 and received a homestead land patent at Stony Point in 1864. Oyster farming continued through successive Clark and Gillies generations, including on some of the same tidelands Clark worked during the 1860s.
Willapa Wild acquired Stony Point Oyster Company in 2020 and now stewards that history into its next chapter.
1930
Oysterville Sea Farms
The historic property began as the Sherwood Cannery, owned and operated by the Sherwood family. It later passed into the Driscoll-Sheldon family line and eventually became Oysterville Sea Farms.
Willapa Wild now stewards the property as a working farm, store and public gathering place on Willapa Bay.
2019
Willapa Wild
Willapa Wild was introduced in 2019 to carry these histories forward through a shared commitment to regenerative oyster farming.
It connects the lessons of Stony Point and Oysterville Sea Farms with a responsibility to restore the bay, preserve its oyster culture, create meaningful livelihoods and strengthen the community that depends on it.
Continuity required change.
Respecting oyster history does not mean preserving every inherited method. We carry these legacies forward by farming for the living conditions that make oyster culture possible.
Why we do not dredgeEvidence, not adjectives
Measure the work. Publish the results.
Regeneration is not a mood or a label. It is a body of work that can be dated, measured, documented and improved.
Eelgrass restoration
Acreage, dates, maps and ongoing monitoring of restored habitat.
Olympia preservation
Population stewardship, habitat work and a clear non-harvest commitment.
Living filtration
Standing oyster inventory and transparent filtration methodology.
Bay-floor practices
How our farming methods relate to sediment, eelgrass and marine habitat.
Experience the source
Taste the bay. Walk through oyster history.
Oysterville Sea Farms is a working oyster farm, store and gathering place in the historic former Sherwood Cannery on Willapa Bay. Come for fresh oysters, local provisions, farm tours and a direct connection to the place behind the work.
Field notes
Answers grounded in the work.
Firsthand farming knowledge, documented ecology and the lived history of a working bay.
Why We Do Not Dredge in Willapa Bay
A direct explanation of the method we left behind and the farming system we built in its place.
Read the field note →What Is an Olympia Oyster?
Meet the Pacific Northwest’s only native oyster and understand why its survival matters.
Read the field note →Why We Sometimes Do Not Harvest
How water-quality rules, monitoring and cold-chain discipline protect the people we feed.
Read the field note →The responsibility ahead
The history matters because the future does.
We are responsible for the water, habitat, native oysters, working traditions and public understanding that will determine what oyster farming on Willapa Bay becomes next.