If you like oysters, you have lots of choices this season. You can buy a dozen Choptank Sweets, or you can go Skippy Dippers. The Hongatonks are plump and juicy, and the Sweet Jesus might become a new habit at least if not a new religion. Or you can go wild – a dozen of the Chesapeake’s best, harvested as they’ve always been by the watermen who have worked the bay for centuries.

It wasn’t always this way. For decades, there was one oyster, and you could only eat it in a month that ended with an R. But aquaculture oysters can be eaten all year, and they are gaining in popularity. Here to tell us more about them is Rona Kobell, science writer for Maryland Sea Grant and longtime Chesapeake Bay reporter – for the Bay Journal and before that The Baltimore Sun.