The oyster is among the more valuable resources of the Texas coast, providing a livelihood for numbers of anglers and a popular food for Texas appetites. It is one of the few of the animal foods eaten raw. Specifically, it a bivalve mollusk with two shell valves hinged together at one end and closed by a single, large muscle attached to the valves near the other end. It is absent throughout most of the Laguna Madre but reappears near Port Isabel and in South Bay. Typically, it is most abundant in mid-bay areas, forming extensive reefs.
Oysters spawn from the warm weather in late spring until early fall.
Eggs discharged by females are fertilized in the water by sperm released by males. This is an uncertain event at best and only a fraction of the eggs becomes fertile. However, spawning of many oysters at the same time assure an abundance of embryonic oysters. During the veliger stage, lasting two or three weeks, larval losses are very high. While in this stage, larvae are distributed throughout a bay by tidal currents.