'You've won your weight in oysters!' - note in shells stops thieves

'You've won your weight in oysters!' - note in shells stops thieves

LEUCATE (Reuters) – When thieves stole three tonnes of oysters from French shellfish farmer Christophe Guinot, he found a solution: plant secret notes inside oyster shells to help police track down thieves.

Since Guinot implemented the method in 2016, he says there has been no new theft of oysters from his farm. “It had a chilling effect,” the 60-year-old man, from Leucate in southern France, told Reuters.

Oysters are lucrative: At the famous Chez Françoise restaurant in central Paris, a dish of six high-quality oysters costs 24 euros ($ 27). Demand is highest during the holiday season, also the busiest time for thieves.

Guinot breeds oysters in a coastal lagoon near the border between France and Spain. The shells are reared in cages, attached by wires to a metal frame that prevents them from drifting. The thieves take a boat to the cages and tear them out of the water.

Guinot’s solution: take an empty oyster shell, insert a small rolled up note, glue the shell back together and place it in the cage. The note tells whoever opens the shell that he has gained his own weight in oysters and invites him to call to claim his prize.

Anyone claiming their prize could be asked where they bought the oysters, and if it wasn’t from a place Guinot was getting supplies, he could put the police on the trail of thieves.

Fellow producers in the region followed his example and also planted notes among their oysters. So far, no one has claimed the prize from Guinot himself, although some have been claimed from neighboring farms, he said. In at least some cases, the winners had been sold stolen oysters and the police had been alerted.

The news has spread and seems to have created a deterrent effect: after 19 oyster thefts in the region in 2017, there were none in 2020, according to the French Ministry of the Interior.