2012 Seafood festival draws big crowd

Beautiful weather, fresh seafood and the chance to hear Country star Lee Brice, brought thousands of people to Apalachicola this weekend for the 49th annual Florida Seafood Festival.

 As always the oyster eating and oyster shucking contests proved to be extremely popular.

 There were 13 contestants in the oyster-eating contest; the winner in the women’s division was Angie Harnage of Georgia who downed 120 oysters in 15 minutes.

 Mrs. Harnage also won last year and now has 8 oyster eating trophies – her personal best was 178 oyster.

 2nd place this year went to Ashley Goin who downed 72 oysters.

 The winner in the men’s division was Lee Postier who came down from Kansas to eat 168 oysters in 15 minutes.

 Warren Melzer of Tallahassee came in a close second with 150 oysters.

 This year’s oyster shucking champ was Rick McCurley of Panama City Beach.

 He won an all expense paid trip to the national oyster shucking competition in Maryland.

Second place went to current national oyster shucking champion Mike Martin, who will head to Ireland next September to compete in the world shucking championships in Galway, Ireland.

 Attendance and earning numbers for the festival have not yet been released.

 Judging by the crowds and the lack of parking, however, this was a very successful festival.

 If you would like to see pictures from this weekend’s event, we have posted quite a few on the news page at oysterradio.com.

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