RECAP: Astoria Community Event at Buoy Beer

February 6th 2024, Buoy Beer, Astoria Food Hub, Astoria, Or

As our first ever free Winter Waters community event, we had so much fun at Buoy Beer at the Astoria Food Hub! The evening was made up of various activities that each had their own pieces of education.

For the first hour, we got to mingling and learning from some of our favorite non-profits who were all so generous to come spend the evening with us teaching folks about what they do. Here’s a run down of who was present and what they shared.

Elakha Alliance had a table full of sea otter artwork, stickers, and even a real sea otter pelt! They told us all about their mission to create a thriving sea otter population and robust and resilient marine ecosystem.

Seafood and Gender Equality shared all about their work to create gender equality in the seafood industry.

Tillamook Estuaries Partnership and Friends of Netarts Bay were well represented with a microscope display of live oyster larvae! It was so cool to see these little larvae swimming around while learning about our neighboring bays and estuaries that house so many of our shellfish fisheries!

The Oregon Aquaculture Association also told us so many cool things happening in the industry within Oregon and surrounding areas.

As Winter Waters and Oregon Seaweed we had a touch tank of some common tidepool animals (thanks to the Seaside Aquarium for trusting us with these babies), like a live sand dollar, anemone, urchins, and a sea star! People got to try and feed the sea urchin one of their favorite foods, Pacific Dulse, as a segway to learning about the seaweed industry and new urchin ranching industries in Oregon.

During the next hour we had two super fun and interactive culinary demos done by Winter Waters co-founders Alanna and Rachelle! It started with Alanna of Oregon Seaweed, doing a cooking demo of Pacific Dulse. She fried the fresh dulse, showing the quick color change that occurs and the drastic flavor difference of fresh vs fried seaweed. Some children continuously grabbed handfuls of seaweed once they learned how salty and delicious it was. Rachelle, of Blue Evolution, then demonstrated how to properly shuck an oyster to preserve the flesh and prevent shells from cracking and/or cutting yourself! Attendees got to try their hand at shucking their own oysters and we had some great improvements.

Chef Bob of Buoy Beer even put on a few seaweed menu specials including a seaweed and mushroom pasta with shitiake and local hedgehog mushrooms, linguine, soy sauce, dulse seaweed butter, and sea lettuce flakes. Plus, a cleverly names seaweed-infused margarita: Margaweeda.

The evening ended with a super fun game of ocean, fishery, and marine science trivia hosted by Alanna. Over three rounds we had three separate winning teams. Winners got to take home prizes generously donated by some amazing seaweed food producers: Barnacle Foods, Daybreak Seaweed, HAB Sauce, Tiny Fish Co., and Oregon Albacore Commission.

Thanks to everyone who came out to this fun and interactive event! We can’t wait to do more free community days.