I was born into this world. My father started selling oysters in the early 1950s. He was definitely looking for a way to stay local. He didn’t want to go to England. The local pub here, Paddy Burke’s (in Clarinbridge, Galway), was his first customer. They’re still a customer 70 years later. As soon as I could count or stand at the table and do something, I was taken out and made to work. You’d count or choose different kinds. You’d soak it up.

I can remember eating the baby oysters as they broke them out of the shell. Those were the first oysters I had a taste for. I can remember the sounds and smells.

I knew I would end up here after school. I went to Letterkenny for a year to do an aquaculture course and learn about the industry. A good oyster has a nice deep shell with good firm fish inside that has a nice aroma, is nicely salty and well seasoned. Of course you only taste that when you eat it, but when you look at it, it’s actually the shape and the weight in your hand. If it’s too light for the size of the shell, the meat inside might not be that heavy.

When you open an oyster, it should smile at you. You can see how it’s glistening and fresh. It has a little shimmer, a lot of water, and still moves a little. It looks inviting. The flat, native wild oyster is something I’m very fond of. It grows in the wild and reproduces in the summer. We don’t touch or eat them during the months without an “r.” Oysters take five or six years to grow before they’re harvested.

The seeds for farmed oysters come from a hatchery. You put about 2000 baby oysters in a mesh bag on a rack on the seashore. They grow and you divide them every few months until, after about three years, you have about 150 oysters in your bag. You have to cut off the edges by shaking and jiggling them to get the teardrop shape.

When they are younger, they are in the water as much as possible. They are moved further up the shore to get used to being out of the water so that they don’t panic when they are packed up and sent away. The most important thing about the oyster is that, like us, it doesn’t like stress. If you can keep them stress-free, they are much nicer and last longer.

One of the most amazing things about them is that they take in all this phytoplankton – they can filter up to 11 liters of water per hour. We give them nothing. Oysters are ecosystem warriors because they clean the water. It’s great to work with this kind of product. Every oyster farmer has the best oysters in the world. The difference is what we call ‘merroir’ – every bay has its own flavor that comes from the phytoplankton that grows in that bay.

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I’m worried about climate change. We had a sea heatwave in June last year when the water temperature was five or six degrees above normal. It caused a lot of stress on the younger animals and a lot of farmers had livestock deaths. All the work we’ve done over the last few years has been completely wasted. It wasn’t just Galway Bay, it was all the way to Scotland, which was scary. It just shows you how small you are and how little you can do about it. If that happens every year, it’s going to be a challenge.

Drainage means that much more freshwater comes down, and the native flat oyster is very sensitive to this. In the past, the water was simply channeled from the land into the bay. If it all comes at once, the freshwater can drown the native oysters.

Ireland is our biggest market. The highlight for us is the Oyster Festival here in Galway (in September). A lot of younger Irish people coming back from their travels have seen oyster bars or eaten oysters at festivals. Irish palates are becoming a little more adventurous. They are looking for our environmentally friendly foods.

Some people are afraid of oysters. We recommend that they first smell the oyster to remind themselves of the shore, then take a sip of water to prepare the palate, as if dipping their toes in the water. Then slide the oyster into your mouth, swirl it around and take a bite. In that bite, you will feel the essence of the ocean.

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Are they an aphrodisiac? If you eat oysters, enjoy life and maybe drink a glass of wine, anything can happen.

We export as far as Whistler in Canada, down to Singapore and maybe 14 countries in between. It’s unreal. When you sit up on top of Burj Khalifa, or at Bentley in London or at Harrods and see people eating a Kelly oyster, you scratch your head and ask yourself, “How could this happen?”

Dad was proud of the development. Me and my brother Mícheál and our wives and now Mícheál’s son Michael are here full time. It’s great that our oysters are respected. You think about all the work that has gone into them and you feel very proud.

In conversation with Joanne Hunt