The Last Oyster Bed at Hooligan Flats

December 2023, on the mudflats below Port Townsend. Eleanor Bouchard had tonged the same oyster bed for forty-two years, since her father taught her at twelve. Then the Army Corps dredged the channel, and the water went strange. First the oysters came up empty, shells clean as a whistle. Then the mud itself seemed wrong, sucking at her skiff like something pulling from below. When she found the first one—a shell the size of a dinner plate, closed so tight a knife couldn't pry it—she thought it was a mistake. But they kept coming. And whatever was inside those shells, it wasn't an oyster. This is the story of what Eleanor dragged up from the bottom, and what dragged back. #HooliganFlats #PortTownsend #EleanorBouchard #oysterbed #dredging #ArmyCorps #tidepool #mudflat #shellfish #whatsinside #notoysters #Decemberfog #fortyyears #fathersdaughter #fisherwoman #FexingoHorror #HorrorPodcast #TenFathoms Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo