Oyster theft may not be the most common of crimes, but it’s one Massachusetts Environmental Police has on its radar.

In the last 10 years, the state’s environmental police have dealt with 17 shellfish theft cases on Cape Cod, 16 of which were related to oysters, according to Captain Pat Moran.

That’s hardly representative of a crime spree. Still, Ron Glantz, the president of the Barnstable Association of Recreational Shellfishing, says oyster farmers “worry about (theft) all the time.’’ Glantz says thefts happen more often than police hear about them, and Moran says he also thinks the crimes go under-reported. Moran also says smaller cases may be reported to local police departments or shellfish constables, but not the state.


Overall, though, shellfish theft is pretty rare, Moran says. Growers’ anxieties may come from the fact that these are very difficult crimes to solve. Of the 17 thefts the state’s environmental police have tackled in the past 10 years, Moran told Boston.com that only one has been solved.

The one solved case was cracked in March, when indictments were handed down to Michael Bryant and Joseph Vaudo. Bryant allegedly stole thousands of oysters on Cape Cod last year and has since been sentenced to two years in prison. Vaudo, a wholesaler and retailer who owns Joe’s Lobster Mart in Sandwich, pleaded guilty to receiving some of that stash. Vaudo has since been locked in a fight to keep his business alive, as the state’s Department of Public Health has moved to revoke his license to buy and sell seafood.

(Vaudo has brought the dispute into the legal system, appealing the decision to Superior Court and securing an injunction against the state in the meantime. At a Tuesday hearing, a judge took the question of whether to uphold Vaudo’s restraining order under advisement. For now, Joe’s Lobster Mart is still alive.)

Joe’s Lobster Mart along the Cape Cod Canal was ordered to close after being caught selling stolen oysters. —The Boston Globe

Joe’s aside, the state’s environmental police have otherwise been unsuccessful in tracking the cases as they come in. Thefts tend to happen in the dead of night, when nobody’s watching. And many oyster sites are on private property, meaning they’re not under the close watch of the state’s environmental police. So while police pick up cases when they’re reported, and while they’d stop suspicious activity if they saw it, they generally are not monitoring for theft.


An investigation usually comes down to talking to people in the know, like dealers and harvesters, Moran says. (An informant tipped off investigators in the Bryant case, according to The Cape Cod Times.)

To some extent, the industry has to be self-policing. Farmers whose oysters are kept close to shore may have cameras watching the waters, according to Glantz, whose association represents mostly recreational farmers.

Some farmers keep their oysters further off shore, though. That’s the case for Peter Chase, who harvests out of Buzzards Bay. He says the best security for a harvester is to be friendly with neighbors on shore, who will recognize an unfamiliar boat and will keep an eye out for the harvester.

Skip Bennett, the CEO of Island Creek Oysters in Duxbury, also keeps his oysters well off-shore, and says that cooperation with other farmers, the harbormaster, and other neighbors is important. “We’re a pretty tight group here in Duxbury,’’ says Bennett, whose oysters are distributed widely across the state, and who operates a Boston restaurant by the same name.

Oyster beds in Duxbury Bay —The Boston Globe

Chase and Bennett both say they worry less than a closer-to-shore oyster farmer might, because even getting to their oysters would require quite a bit of effort—boating out to the spot and either hauling up a heavy cage, or donning some scuba gear.

That’s not to say oyster theft of any kind is easy. Moran, at the Massachusetts Environmental Police, says a would-be thief would need to know where shallow oysters are kept and how mature they are, meaning that in addition to the logistics of carrying out the theft, there’s also going to be some research involved.


Last summer’s Cape Cod thefts, which saw thousands of oysters taken in a series of heists, fit that description. The oysters Bryant allegedly took from Dennis were in the tidal flats, where farmers’ cages are exposed during low-tide. According to one of the farmers who was hit, only the oysters that were fully mature—meaning about ready for the market—were taken, and they were taken in bulk, likely by truck. Police later had Bryant on surveillance, thanks to a tip from an informant, when they said they watched him raking for oysters in a closed area in Yarmouth, leading to the indictment.

A Barnstable Natural Resource officer holds some of the oysters from one of the Mills River oyster grants where thousands of oysters were stolen in 2013. —The Boston Globe

A thief would also need to have an outlet for the taken property. Though some thefts might be done for personal consumption, the goal of anything widescale would most likely be to sell the oysters. “If you don’t have someone to sell the stuff to, you don’t steal,’’ a farmer told The Boston Globe earlier this year.

In Bryant’s case, that outlet was allegedly Vaudo. (Vaudo, for his part, contends he did not pay for the oysters from Bryant.) Moran suggested that restaurant owners would be more likely culprits than wholesalers such as Vaudo.

With so few solved cases, it’s difficult to get a sense for the size of the black market in Massachusetts. Nor is there much in the way of national data. According to Bob Rheault, executive director of the East Coast Shellfish Growers Association: “It’s not one of those things that’s easy to put a handle on. … It’s challenging, and probably more pervasive than we’d like to admit.’’

Oyster theft isn’t unique to the region. France has also dealt with oyster thefts, and also found them challenging to get a handle on. In France, the thieves were often other oyster farmers.

Oysters currently sell for between 55 and 60 cents at the harvester-to-distributor level, a price that a thief would have to undercut to make it worthwhile for the buyer to do business outside the law. (At a restaurant, you’re likely going to pay $2.50 to $3.50 a piece for oysters—except during some wonderful happy hours, when they’re significantly less expensive.)

Bryant pleaded guilty to stealing more than $40,000 worth of oysters. He also allegedly took gear in the process, putting a further dent in his victims’ wallets.

There may be another built-in industry factor that prevents heists from happening more often: health regulations.

Oysters that are not properly handled are considered a health threat, and one public health officials take pretty seriously. That likely scares prospective black market buyers off, Island Creek’s Bennett says. Bennett says it would be “brazen’’ for a wholesaler to purchase oysters that have not been properly handled, and he doesn’t think “any reputable buyer’’ would be interested in doing so, knowing the threat it could pose both to the public and to their own ability to operate.

That explains the involvement of the Department of Public Health in Vaudo’s case. Vaudo’s licenses to operate are secured through DPH, and the department claims his receipt of oysters that were not properly handled is grounds to revoke his permits. Massachusetts regulations say revocation is justified for a permit holder who is convicted “for a crime relating to the harvesting, processing, storage, distribution or sale of seafood in connection with the permitted or certified business.’’

Vaudo claims he did not pay for the oysters and contends the stolen shellfish never entered the market, because he says he dumped them into the Cape Cod Canal when he realized they had not been properly handled.

But DPH has said that even if that’s all true, it doesn’t matter. According to the DPH decision: “illustrates (his) lack of awareness and comprehension of one of the pivotal aspects of food safety—industry self-policing.’’

And there’s that word again: self-policing. Again, these crimes are rare. If oysters don’t have much of a black market, it’s because that system basically works … most of the time, anyway.