The oyster harvest began Friday in Hiroshima Prefecture, the country’s largest region for the mollusks. This year, the season began 10 days later than normal.

The association of oyster growers decided to postpone the opening of the season for that amount of time as the growth of oysters was delayed, apparently affected by higher seawater temperatures this year.

Early Friday morning, oyster farmers headed to their oyster beds in the Seto Inland Sea as they waited for dawn so they could begin harvesting.

Among them was Muneo Amisaki, 39, of Amibun Kaisan, an oyster cultivating company based in the city’s Nishi Ward. At around 5:50 a.m., he and four colleagues traveled by boat for about 15 minutes to the company’s oyster farm.

When they left port it was raining, but the sky began to brighten as they reached the bed.

Amisaki and his colleagues used a crane to collect the blackish-brown oyster shells attached to wires that had been sunk near the bottom of the sea. Soon, there was a small mountain of oyster shells on their boat.

They managed to harvest more than 10,000 oysters.

KEYWORDS Hiroshima, harvest, oysters