P R OF I L E
CYRUS BUFFUM AS TOLD TO The Urban Electric Co.
PROFILE
IMAGINE KEROUAC’S WANDERLUST MINUS THE DISDAIN. HEMINGWAY’S AUTHENTICITY WITH LESS ROAD-WEARINESS OR DEFEATISM. COUSTEAU’S DEPTH WITHOUT COSTUME.
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CYRUS BUFFUM IS AN EXPLORER WITH AN OLD SPIRIT WHOSE CURIOSITY IS ROOTED IN PRECISION (WITHOUT PRETENSE) AND INTROSPECTION (WITHOUT SELF-IMPORTANCE).
AND LIKE HIS SEAFARING PREDECESSORS, CYRUS IS MORE EASILY DEFINED BY HOW HE THINKS THAN BY WHAT HE DOES.
Officially, Cyrus Buffum is the founder of Seaborn Oyster Co., the six-year-old Charleston-based outfit that cultivates South Carolina’s wild oysters using traditional methods to produce premium singles for restaurants and private clients. Seaborn also offers programming to promote awareness of coastal issues, from resource conservation to the unique flavor profile of his sought-after selects. Unofficially, his work encompasses a broader mission to protect the natural world and be a steward for the waters that connect us all. If that seems sweeping and ambitious, that’s because it is. Since Cyrus is always on the move—literally—the best way to get a true sense of his essence is to observe him in his natural element: the water.
A day in the life of Cyrus typically involves a boat ride to an obscure island or inlet, or to the leased strip of intertidal land near Breach Inlet where his oysters are growing in briny beds. The conversation is lively and nothing is off limits. A physics major in college with a minor in mathematics, Cyrus is equal parts introspective and extroverted and carries forth confidently on everything from migratory patterns of roseate spoonbills to the local oyster taxonomy. His favorite topic of late is how Charleston’s unique geography, coastal conditions and cultural history have manifested themselves in the native oyster, a fact that, he feels, has been overlooked and undervalued. In other words, the potential to elevate Lowcountry merroir is long overdue for serious consideration.
CYRUS BUFFUM AS TOLD TO
The Urban Electric Co.
Water has been Cyrus’s passion since he was a kid growing up on Cape Cod, and he embraces it with reverence and an unquenchable thirst to learn its secrets, share its stories and be guided by its flow. Professionally, this ethos has led him down multiple paths, but there’s also an inspiring consistency in his openness to new experiences. Cyrus embraces the freedom to create impact outside of traditional channels, relying instead on a lesson he learned long ago: Adaptation is the engine of life. And who is he to contradict the laws of nature?
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Sunset on Swinton Creek, home to one of Cyrus’s cultivation sites.
“LOOKING BACK, THESE SCARCE OYSTERS TAUGHT ME TO SEE THE SUBTLETIES OF NATURE IN WAYS I PREVIOUSLY HAD NOT.”
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CYRUS BUFFUM in his own words...
t was December 2015. I was in the Department of Natural Resource’s commercial licensing office to fill out paperwork when an old salt next to me offered some unsolicited advice. “There’s no money in oysters,” he said. That was the day I launched Seaborn. His words might have been daunting had my hubris not led me to gloss over his perspective with an internal scoff: Clearly, I knew something he didn’t. I was setting out to take advantage of a booming opportunity. Charleston’s culinary scene was on a steep ascent and the oyster was poised to play a leading role. I harvested single oysters that first season from the public grounds of an inlet-facing island at the confluence of the Stono and Kiawah Rivers. I called them Snake Island Selects. I carried them back to the landing in a single milk crate aboard my 1987 aluminum Starcraft powered by a two-stroke Evinrude, also from 1987, and a pair of wooden oars mounted amidship as frequently as the tide would allow (a contingency I’d come to rely on often). I’d often tie up behind or just ahead of a group of seasoned-looking oystermen, who’d always have an intimidating number of bushels stacked on their decks, cigarettes between their lips, voices, mostly profanity, projecting across the surface. It was around this time that I discovered two sources of oyster lore from the nineteenth century. The first was a federal report published by the United States Fish Commission, which contained a detailed analysis of the status of oysters on every creek, waterway and inlet along the South Carolina coastline—from the salinity and turbidity of the water to the total acreage of bivalves in a given location. The other was a series of proceedings from Charleston’s Elliott Society of Natural History, a longstanding organization that often focused their studies on the characteristics of our native oysters. Seeing the potential for growth in Charleston’s oyster industry, I remember thinking in those early days how unsustainable my trajectory was. I was reliant on public beds that were open to every other commercial oysterman in the state, and what few oysters I was able to harvest on these grounds were the hidden gems that had been passed over and left behind by clear-cutting types who harvested for volume.
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Looking back, however, these scarce oysters taught me to see the subtleties of nature in ways I hadn’t before. At the time, I was a man stuck between two worlds, pinned at times to the point of paralysis by what felt like conflicting forces. On the one hand, I was chasing the growing popularity of the oyster. I assembled nearly forty acres of private beds on which to grow my business to scale, certain that more is better than less. I courted the latest and newest technologies to produce a consistent and perfect looking oyster, certain that new is better than old. I bought a bigger engine, too, certain that speed is a sign of success. And I grew confident on a wave of acclaim from chefs, restaurants, media and social likes, certain that my value came from the judgment of others. At the same time, my intuition, quiet as it may have been to start, was growing into a deafening force of its own. I lost my ego in the writings of Wendell Berry, E. F. Schumacher, Jane Jacobs, Masanobu Fukuoka and George Perkins Marsh, as I learned about the ancient wisdom ingrained in our natural world, and slept hunched over my computer as I poured over library archives of obscure manuscripts from years ago. I felt the strain of imbalance between competing signals. Eventually, a calibration of sorts took place. Things came to a head the season before last, when I surrendered all but six of my acres, lost several restaurant accounts due to an infrequent production schedule and swapped the big and fast boat for a lower-octane vessel more suited to the current-laden conditions of a tidal creek. As a result of the shift, I started paying more attention to what had been previously undetectable: The different types of algae that grew on the farm and when; the patterns of shorebirds overhead; the nuanced characteristics of the oysters of varying locations; when my body grew tired, or thirsty or hungry. Gradually, the feeling of strain weakened. The value I’ve gained these past five years has been in realizing the enduring connection we have to the natural world—which exists whether we recognize it in the moment or not. To fight this bond is, in the end, to fight oneself.
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