How do they get the things open? If they smashed the closed wholes against rocks, as otters do, the fragments could cut their delicate tongues. Instead they sing. They journey in cliques to the oyster bed, then hum at a resonant frequency, so that the oysters, charmed or fooled into attention, start to open themselves up to their underwater world.

The pearl harvest comes as almost an afterthought: no one needs more than a few, unless for ball bearings and other mechanical uses, where polished pebbles do as well. Fine oysters, once eaten, survive in outline and memory because the mermaids save individual shells, some for ornament, more for construction, building slow shelters, sharp-edged hiding places, for when the trawlers pass overhead.

Good oysters taste creamy and semi-sweet, since the mermaids and their environs are already salty. Other words mermaids might use include tender and wholesome.  Some of us believe that mermaids eating oysters heal their vocal chords, necessarily more powerful than ours, since mermaids’ speech must carry underwater: otherwise they could speak only with their closest neighbors. Young mermaids whose voices will not carry get asked to eat oysters by the half-dozen in order to shape and strengthen their sound.

Except for those cases—rare and vexing ones—most mermaid cliques regard the first oyster as a rite of passage: the first time a young mer sings to open an oyster herself, she gets to display the shell. It’s a sign: you can now use songs for other purposes—tempting sailors, or keeping sailors away; repelling sharks, dolphins or orcas (distinct songs for each); attracting and directing food fish in schools.

New York harbor oysters feel stodgy in the mouth, enormous, nutritious, with strong shells, but not much prized compared the Gulf of Maine. Nonetheless mer populations lamented for decades the apparent extinction of oysters in Long Island Sound. They cheer the replenishment of the oysters beds: one of the few human schemes they approve. Some even sing new songs about the far future, when they will live alongside us again.

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Stephanie Burt is Donald and Katherine Loker Professor of English at Harvard. SUPER GAY POEMS, a collection of 51 poems (none by Stephanie) with an essay (by Stephanie) about each one, came out (as it were) in April 2025; her book about Taylor Swift will follow in October.

Mara Hampson is an aspiring artist and jill of all crafts. They live in Boston with their cat Pico. She bites (the cat, not Mara.)