‘Something out of the ordinary’: why are Japan’s oysters dying en masse?

Taketoshi Niina, the second-generation head of Niina Suisan, an oyster-farming company in Kure with a history spanning more than 70 years Photograph: Kazuma Obara/The Guardian

The Kure oyster festival is doing a brisk trade in beer and grilled meat on sticks. But the longest queues are in front of the oyster stalls, where chefs shuffle piles of mottled shellfish across griddles, waiting for their hinges to ease and reveal their fleshy interiors.

Nobuyuki Miyaoka, who is attending the festival with his son, daughter-in-law and their young children, likes his oysters steamed with sake and served with a few drops of tangy ponzu sauce. “The local oysters were fine until this year,” he says. “They used to be a lot bigger … look how small they are.”