Drakes Bay Oyster Company has worked overtime and enlisted the aid of Dixon Marine Services and employees from Tomales Bay Oyster Company to meet a government-mandated deadline—today, a day short of 10 years since Kevin Lunny took over the lease from the Johnson family—to remove his property from Drakes Estero. “We slightly underestimated exactly how many [oysters] are out there,” Mr. Lunny said. “These are not widgets on the shelves of a box store that are easy to count.” Some of the oysters, which grow in three-year cycles, were planted years ago, and survival rates can vary, he said. How many have workers pulled out in recent days? Mr. Lunny was unsure, though boats are setting out about four times a day to collect strings from the racks and bags from the water bottom, and he estimated that four truck-and-trailer loads had been carting away oysters each day for the past few days. “We don’t have actual counts. We’re just pulling bags of oysters out and pulling strings and those strings might have 100 per string or 80 or 120. We’re not stopping to count,” he said. Though there’s not enough time to separate the grown oysters from strings as employees typically would, Mr. Lunny said they have been “shaking and pounding on them” to remove most of the bivalves and separate the strings from the shells, which will be used in restoration projects. (Tubes, wires, strings and “as few oysters” as possible are going to the dump.) The farm is also preparing to remove ice machines, the refrigeration system, the saltwater circulation system, office supplies and other equipment that will be used until the last day—when many of the last dozen workers will be out of a job, save those who can work for Mr. Lunny’s distribution business, which he said will continue without interruption using oysters from Baja California and potentially Washington State and the East Coast.