Dakhla oysters

What it is

The oyster farmed in Morocco is the Pacific oyster (Crassostrea gigas), a bivalve with two shells of lime that comes from the North Pacific and is now raised in many temperate and subtropical countries.¹ Oyster farming is the country’s most important form of aquaculture, with more than 400 tonnes a year.²

Where it comes from

In 2019, 17 farms were operating in Oualidia and Dakhla; for Dakhla, 140 new projects had been launched that together are to produce 29,000 tonnes.³ The bay of Dakhla includes, among others, the designated Duna Blanca shellfish zone, which belongs to the Dakhla maritime district.⁴ There the Ministry of Fisheries has the seawater and the shellfish monitored by a technical committee that relies on analyses by the fisheries research institute INRH.⁵

Order No. 3859-18 of the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries of 25 December 2018, published in Bulletin officiel No. 6758 of 7 March 2019, lays down the list of the country’s shellfish farming zones with their location, boundaries and code number.⁶ For the Pacific oyster it names the Oualidia lagoon in the province of El Jadida with parks 1, 7 and 10, and near Dakhla the farming sites Duna Blanca and Boutalha; Boutalha North is designated for clams, other sites in the bay for cockles, razor clams and mussels.⁷

The lagoon of Oualidia is a saltwater lagoon about 11 kilometres long between sandbanks.⁸ About 10 kilometres of it are used for oyster farming, divided into seven farms, the boundary of each marked by a simple hut with a flat roof.⁹

History

Farming began in 1950 in the lagoon of Oualidia, which lies south of El Jadida; La Vie éco calls the El Jadida region the cradle of Moroccan oyster farming.¹⁰ At the end of the 1990s, five oyster parks in Oualidia produced around 150 tonnes a year; the Marchica lagoon near Nador also supplied oysters, and the bay of Dakhla was considered a possible farming area.¹¹

In Dakhla, oyster farming grew into a branch of its own in the roughly 15 years before 2018, and it is increasingly finding a place in gastronomy.¹² In June 2019 the national aquaculture agency ANDA held the first Oyster Day in El Jadida, intended to become an annual meeting of the sector.¹³

How it is made

The farmer Rachid Kandy, who learned the trade in Brittany, works in Dakhla by the same methods and almost everything by hand: the mesh bags are mended by hand, the oysters washed by hand.¹⁴ Oysters from approved zones reach the market packed and with a health mark; according to the Ministry of Fisheries, loose oysters from street vendors offer no such guarantee.¹⁵

When

In Oualidia oysters are available all year round.¹⁶ There the harvest of the Pacific oyster extends beyond the classic oyster season from September to April.¹⁷