Visiting Oyster Farms in Coffin Bay

Visiting Oyster Farms in Coffin Bay

Last month, I revisit Melbourne for a photography trip with Samsung. One of the places we covered was the Victoria Market. Instead of shopping, we did a food trail in the market and we found many fresh oysters. Most of them originated from Coffin Bay, South Australia.

Coffin Bay is not a bay of coffins but the name is in honour for Sir Isaac Coffin. On 16 February 1802, British naval explorer Matthew Flinders named the bay after his friend while French explorer Nicolas Baudin provided the alternative French name of Baie Delambre.

The bay is located just minutes of driving from Port Lincoln which is a beautiful fishing town located in South Australia. You can drive from Adelaide to Port Lincoln or flying with domestic airline for an hour flight. If you are a seafood lover, Port Lincoln is the destination for you!

Back to Coffin Bay, it is highly advisable to contact a local tour as you need to rent a small boat in Coffin Bay to visit the oyster farms. Let the local tour will do the messy part for you especially the drive from Port Lincoln to Coffin Bay and also the boat ride to the oyster farms as you need permission to enter this farms.

Coffin Bay is the home of one of the biggest oyster farms in Australia. Geographically Coffin Bay is the ideal place for oyster farming and its cooling water temperature creates a great place for oyster to grow. Hot water temperature is good for oyster spawning but they will not get large in size. Thus, Coffin Bay’s knee length water level, calm tide and clean water make it the ideal place for oyster farming.

That’s why it is always important to know the source of your food especially oysters. On top of oysters, there are mussels farming too.

While sailing to the oyster farms in Coffin Bay, we went to check out the wild sea lions. They are usually sleeping on the rock sun bathing.

In additional, Coffin Bay is always home of a school of dolphins. They will usually show up and sailed together with ships and yachts. Of course, it depends on your luck whether you can spot the dolphins but I had my “dolphin sight seeing tour” for free.

There are many oyster farms in Coffin Bay and they are owned by different owners or companies. Hence, you can see many oyster farms but they are designated at their own land in the bay.

They us the adjustable long line system and collection is easy using this system. Within this long lines are dozens of oyster baskets. Like I mentioned earlier, the water here is knee high. Once the oysters reached optimum sizes, they will remove it and send it to processing plant to check and clean the oysters. If the oysters are not in optimum size, they will be brought back to the bay to grow.

The tour guide cum owner of the oyster farm took out one of the oyster baskets and there are dozens of oysters within the basket. This is the freshest way to have oyster, straight from the basket.

Check out the video on how to open the oyster shell in a proper way.

You can eat it fresh just like that or with a sprinkle of lemon juice. If you are oyster lover, there is a whole farm of oysters for you to eat! This is one of the freshest, cleanest and best oysters I’ve tasted in my life!

Remember to contact the local tour to explore oyster farm in Coffin Bay when you stay in Port Lincoln. This is one of its kind unique adventures you will not forget.

How to go to Coffin Bay?

Fly direct from Kuala Lumpur to Adelaide, capital of South Australia with Malaysia Airlines or AirAsiaX and then take a domestic flight from Adelaide to Port Lincoln. If you are an avid adventurer, drive from Adelaide to Port Lincoln.