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Siobhan braced her hip against the stainless steel prep station as an autumn squall rattled the canvas pavilion on the Claddagh quayside . At eight in the morning , the scent of crushed ice , damp kelp , and Atlantic salt filled the marquee . Stacked behind her in three towering timber palisades sat twelve thousand native flat oysters , freshly dredged from Galway Bay . Beside her , Liam stared down in disbelief at his favourite carbon - steel shucking blade , snapped cleanly at the wooden bolster . The opening round of the World Oyster Opening Championship was scheduled for eleven o'clock , and thirty international competitors were already sharpening their knives in the holding tent . Little did we suspect when we took over our family's seafood stall that a festival weekend could dismantle every orderly routine we possessed . It was not the sheer volume of shellfish that threatened our composure , but the unforgiving physical precision demanded by the native flats . Unlike common farmed rock oysters , which yield to casual leverage along the hinge , the round European flat possesses an adductor muscle like wire rope . What the festival crowds see from the grandstand is a blur of flashing silver and flying shells ; what the opener experiences is an exhausting chess match between blade point and calcified mother - of - pearl . One slip against the hinge , and the blade skews into the palm . What Liam urgently needed was not fraternal sympathy , but a tempered Swedish replacement blade . Siobhan dashed across the muddy paddock to old Sean's tackle shed , returning with an unadorned , short - handled oyster knife ground from saw steel . Seldom had Liam gripped a balance so unfamiliar , yet hardly had he strapped the chainmail glove over his left hand when the festival master of ceremonies announced the call for heats . Round one demanded thirty oysters opened , presented intact on the half - shell , and devoid of grit or severed flesh within three minutes . Under no circumstances would the judges award points to a mangled gill . Taking her place at the icing table , Siobhan watched her brother find his rhythm . With each sharp twist of the saw - steel knife , a shell popped with a clean , wet crack . It was the rhythm of the Claddagh itself : cold hands , keen steel , and the Atlantic tide answering every stroke .
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