Oyster Shuckers Gone Wild!

I'm backstage at the Shiny Sea Oyster Shucking Championships, one of the highlights of the Shellfish Festival, held every September in Prince Edward Island. I'm surrounded by shuckers. One of them, a barrel-chested guy in a tight white T-shirt, wanders the perimeter, his hands constantly moving as he mimes shucking oysters in some sort of shellfish world version of tai chi. This is Daniel Notkin, founder of the Montreal Oyster Festival, champion shucker, co-producer of the documentary Shuckers, and possibly the biggest oyster geek on earth.

It is precisely this doc that has brought me to PEI, as I want to experience for myself the unbridled debauchery that supposedly animates the world of oyster shuckers. I'm talking specifically about the wild scene that takes place after this particular shucking contest—the unofficial after party, where access is by invitation only and the location is top secret: The Shucker's Ball.

Seven-time Canadian oyster shucking champ Eamon Clark remembers one Shucker's Ball in particular where everyone was dressed up in costume. "We roll in all high on mushrooms and didn't know it was a costume party. We were tripping out, just going through the party. This guy had climbed a tree in a lion costume and he fell out of the tree out of fucking nowhere, and my buddy Josh just freaked out. It took a few hours to find him."

John Bil is one of the founding pioneers of the Canadian oyster scene. He helped start the Shellfish Festival, and the notorious underground party that is the Shucker's Ball (which is not affiliated with the Shellfish Festival). He hasn't hosted a ball in recent years but on this, the 20th anniversary, he's back to throw another one.

"One time I'd left a bunch of kayaks on shore for people to use in the day to paddle around. That night, everyone's doing mushrooms, and these two guys—a chef and a shucker from Florida, both high on mushrooms—go out in the kayaks and there's a hurricane. It's Hurricane Juan and the shucker is paddling his ass off; the waves are enormous. He's yelling at the chef to help him. He turns around, the chef is totally passed out, just dead weight. Everybody at the party is like, 'Where are those guys?' An hour later they came back. It was a fucking miracle, actually."

For tonight's party, cottages have been rented out in Brackley Beach, a band has been booked, and the kegs are on ice. The lobsters, oysters, clams, and mussels are piled in the fridge for the feast tonight. But before all that, it's time to shuck.

Patrick McMurray is here—his shucking feats are in the Guinness Book of World Records. His hair is a swirl of dirty blonde curls; he wears a long, heavy denim apron with leather pockets; and one of his hands is encased in a chainmail glove. All he needs is a javelin and he could be auditioning for a gig at Medieval Times.

Maxime Daigle is built like a grizzly and sports a big beard, trucker cap, and oversized glasses. He exudes the unique kind of cool only twentysomething French Canadian guys possess. His family runs Maison Beausoleil, an Acadian oyster company, out of New Brunswick. "I was raised on an oyster farm. I've always shucked oysters," he says matter-of-factly.

But it wasn't until he moved to Montréal to finish his bachelor's degree that he got into competing. He'd moved in with his brother Jean Francois, a cook who had left the kitchen at beloved Montreal institution Joe Beef, to shuck oysters at Lucille's Oyster Dive.

"That's when I met Daniel Notkin. We were drinking and he said, 'You should shuck, you.' So I started shucking oysters for Daniel, like, two days a week. I was doing my bachelor's in biology and I had no plan to go back to the oyster farm, but then I started shucking oysters competitively."

Thirty-year-old Jason Nagy runs Shuck Me, an oyster catering and importing company in Montreal. He tells me about the shucking circuit: "There's two in PEI, one in Montréal, a couple in Ottawa, a couple in Toronto, New York, Boston, Whistler. And that's not even thinking about all the Southern states, like New Orleans and Florida. There's a lot of place to shuck oysters in competition."

He's competed here three times before, and he's always placed but never won. He's ready to take it and he's got a strategy he hopes will serve him well. He will slow down.

That may seem counterintuitive in a contest that's all about speed, but there's more to shucking than that. There is a back room where the judges will deliberate over each plate of oysters, issuing demerits if the oysters aren't cleanly shucked, if there's grit in the shell, if the meat is pierced or ragged, if there's blood in the shell.

But oysters don't bleed, so how? Daigle explains, "If you shuck your own hand."

I ask if he's ever done that in competition. He hasn't, but he recalls when Nagy did a few years ago. "Every single oyster had blood on it and he got disqualified automatically. It was a beautiful thing to see."

No wonder Nagy wants to slow it down. Each shucker is given 14 Raspberry Point oysters, 12 of which they have to shuck and plate perfectly in order to win the $2,000 prize.

Backstage, waiting for the contest to begin, the shuckers joke and pound each other on the back. This is an annual gathering and they come from all over—Florida, Calgary, Montreal—to compete and drink beer. Nagy explains, "Everyone wants to win. You've got to focus on the win, but you also got to focus on the fact that when you're all up on stage together, when you're all drinking together, that's when you have fun."

Out front, the crowd is pumped. "Thunderstruck" blares while middle-aged couples clink Caesars and young kids pop selfies. The shuckers come up two at a time and are introduced by the emcee with nicknames reminiscent of old WWE fighters. There's Jeff Noye, the "Barefoot Baron" of Tyne Valley, PEI, and Ryan "Bam Bam" Vaughn from Boston.

The Barefoot Baron, true to his nickname, kicks off his flip-flops, pounds the rest of his beer, and starts leaping in the air, slapping his hands together. The crowd goes nuts when the announcer yells, "Go!"

The Barefoot Baron wins his round with the fastest time of 1:03:09. The crowd knows this probably won't stand; at least a few competitors will come in under a minute. Anthony Wing from Calgary is the first to do so, then Nagy. Notkin is up now, ready to shuck against Sir Lancelot, a.k.a. McMurray. Notkin stands over his oysters, eyes closed, moving his hands in an abracadabra swirl, mouthing some molluskian chant.

After his round, his time is the fastest of the day at 49 seconds. He shoots his fist in the air and goes down on one knee before hopping up to take some phone pics of his plate of oysters. McMurray does the whole bowing down "I'm not worthy" thing before they exit the stage. All the shuckers join around to ogle the pictures on Notkin's phone. I ask him what he was chanting before the shucking began.

"Shuck clean, shuck clean, shuck clean, shuck clean."

Unfortunately he didn't shuck clean enough to win, but his time set a new record for the competition. Nagy takes the top prize—his slow and steady wins him $2,000. We head to the Shucker's Ball.

But the expected Shucker's Ball debauchery doesn't happen. Daigle stays sober, deciding to drive back to New Brunswick that night. John Bil hands out chowder and lobster rolls while a group of shuckers stand on the front porch talking oysters.

Tim Rozon, co-owner of Garde Manger and Le Bremner in Montreal and co-producer of Shuckers, claims the raucous oyster scene has calmed in recent years.

"When I got into the oyster shucking world, it was pretty crazy. They took a lot of pride in the whole 'shuck a lot of oysters, drink a lot of beer.' That's changed, people take it seriously now. It's like anything—if you're gonna party too hard, you're not going to place that well."

According to Clark, the modern-day oyster shucker is "this anxious person who can't relax and just has to win." He adds, "It used to be really cool; now the people in it are such nerds about it."

The drunkest people here are a group of Toronto chefs in town for a cooking contest that's also part of the Shellfish Festival. They pass a bottle of Jameson around while the band plays jigs and reels from a tiny living room in one of the cottages.

There are mushrooms but no one partakes, although the beer flows freely.

Notkin explains, "You've gone past the Studio 54, you'll never go back. Which is a tragedy, because there is this beauty in debauchery and awesomeness. It's no longer the Wild West it used to be." He leans in, serious as hell, "I've got three companies to run and oyster fest to do, and people are getting laid at my oyster fest. I did not get laid at my oyster fest. I'm working too hard."

He's the new breed of shucker—he takes it seriously and he's a businessman who works so hard he doesn't even have time to get laid at his own debauched oyster festival.

Like one of his young shucking protégés once told him, "You know you've grown up when you're not doing cocaine off your oyster knife anymore."