The World is Your Oyster at Carlsbad Aquafarm! - Oyster Farm Tour

San Diego

Jan 17

Spend the day exploring Southern California’s only shellfish farm! If you are interested in shucking in SoCal, look no further than Carlsbad Aquafarm.

Article courtesy of Maggie’s One Way Ticket Blog

Located right along the stunning Carlsbad Coastline

A highly informative tour with a generous oyster tasting at the end?! Count me in! Carlsbad Aquafarm is open 7 days a week and is conveniently located right off the I-5. The tour is one hour and it begins right outside the Aquafarm. The tour costs $30 for Adults 13+ and $10 for kids 6 and older.

The tour begins with a detailed discovery walk throughout the farm. Our knowledgeable tour guide, Rachel, went over the techniques and practices implemented to sustain and harvest the homegrown mussels and oysters.

Rachel, our great tour guide explaining how the water is one of the cleanest in California due to their Oysters!

It was interesting to learn about the oyster reef life cycle. One of the coolest facts I saw was that oysters filter-feed 1.5 gallons per hour!

Rachel, our tour guide giving us the low down on how oysters grow!

My favorite part of the tour was holding the oysters and mussels. It was a really neat hands-on experience. I enjoyed touching their rough exterior and seeing how they looked in my hands.

Oysters should always be scrubbed clean before consumed. I learned how to work my oyster knife into the hinge. It takes practice. I quickly discovered I was certainly no expert!

The goal is to find the sweet spot in the hinge where the knife can get leverage to pass through. I wiggled the knife around until I was able to twist and pry! The goal is to pop the top shell from the bottom. After that, I pried the shell apart and cut the muscle. I learned to use my knife to free any additional oyster meat.

A super fresh oyster, not 30 minutes outside of the water!

Now, the fun part! I used my knife to slide the knife under the oyster so it was free. I added lemon and then I had the pleasure of trying it. The key is to slurp the oyster from the wide end. This tour gave options to try your oyster with a splash of lemon or hot sauce, I especially loved it with the hot sauce.