"They all gave up on it" for the week, he said Thursday of his fellow baymen, whose tolerance for hours of tonging proved to last only as long as it took for the winds to kick up and the temperature to drop. "Here's a nice full one."
With that, he dumped his haul - a couple of dozen or so oysters caught in the two curved rake heads that clamp together at the end of the device - onto the boat, where the other Larry sorted through them. Some were the size of a pork chop, others nice and compact. Still, it was slow going, the tongs taking hits from the current like a football dummy. Oomph.
"It takes a strong back and a weak mind," Hickman said with a smile.
The Mullica River oysters are a succulent breed with a rich salt content that more than holds its own against better-known varieties. And no more so than when eaten straight out of the Mullica, served on an oysterman's outstretched glove.
"That'll put some . . .," Hickman began about the aphrodisiac effect of the oysters. Well, never mind.
The river's historic oyster beds had been long depleted by disease and overharvesting when the state began an oyster transplant project in 2001, said Jeff Normant, chief shellfish biologist with the state Department of Environmental Protection's Division of Fish and Wildlife.
"The oysters take on the characteristics of the river," Normant said. "These oysters have a really good taste to them. My colleagues on the Delaware Bay and I needle each other. The Mullica ones are better."
About 2,000 bushels of seed oysters were transplanted from natural seed beds in the river - one of the last oyster seed beds on the Atlantic Coast of New Jersey - to a four-acre parcel with a pea-gravel bottom upon which the oyster beds rest.
