The world record mullusk found late last year in Denmark now holds the Guinness entry for largest oyster.
Discovered in October, the certified world’s largest oyster is 13.97 inches, and 4.21 inches wide. It’s actually attached to five other oysters, so the total weight is an astonishing 3.56 pounds.
NPR got a hold of Christine Ditlefsen, the biologist at the Wadden Sea Centre where the oyster was found. It’s located in southeastern Denmark on the North Sea.
“The oyster is still alive and is on display in our exhibition here at the Wadden Sea Centre,” said Ditlefsen in the NPR piece. “We feed it plankton algae and it eats well, so we hope that we can keep it alive for many years.
It is 15-20 years old, and probably one of the first Pacific Oysters (Crassostrea gigas) that came to our part of the Wadden Sea. To know the exact age, we will have to wait until it dies a natural death (hopefully in many years – oysters are recorded to be 30 years old). After the oyster is dead it is possible to make a cut in the shell, and here it is possible to count the growth layers – and then we will know the exact age.”
When the oyster was first discovered, Fine Dining Lovers ran a story on it, and concluded that the oyster is the size as a large shoe.
“My staff called me immediately and said we’ve found this oyster that’s as big as a 44 shoe,” Klaus Melbye, who runs Wadden, told Fine Dining Lovers back in October. ”We think it must be about 20-years-old but first we must cut it before we can find out.”
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As far as eating it? ”We think it’s edible – we’ve found other big oysters out there and the quality of the meat is okay – not always – some of them are thin and look almost like glass but this could be okay,” Melbye said.
Would you eat a potentially 20-year old oyster?
Re-posted from wideopenspaces.com – Click Here for the Original Article
