BOSTON — Damye Hahn was on a mission. To see it through, she needed a very particular sort of help.

“I need to borrow six oysters,” she said.

As co-owner of Faidley’s Seafood in Baltimore, Hahn was in Boston with 22,000 others to attend the three-day Seafood Expo North America.

She and her niece, sales director Alica Mozina Sidhu, needed the oysters to test a $20,000 machine that wraps food in plastic. Their family business, which has sold fresh oysters, crabs and fish from the Chesapeake Bay for 139 years, is expanding.

A second location is opening in Catonsville this fall. New shipping requirements mean their delivery boxes have to change, too. Unless their catch is packaged snugly, it can jumble around, disappointing customers eager to devour what’s inside.

They got oysters from Benny Horseman, co-owner of Madison Bay Seafoods in Dorchester County and a regular supplier.

Then, the Faidley team was off in search of the right solution.

“We serve and ship Chesapeake Bay seafood,” Hahn told me, striding across the crowded convention floor. “And we want to do more of it.”

Theirs was a moment of purpose. At this show, everyone had one.

The Chinese were at the Boston Convention and Events Center, around the corner from the Norwegians and their ambition to dominate the North American market. Greek was being grilled at one spot, Patagonian on ice at another.

Fish was the common language for three days in March, spoken in a hundred dialects and in a roar that rivaled the sea.

“People want more than beef, chicken and pork,” said Nate Canter, quality manager at the Norwegian aquafarming giant Hofseth. “They want different protein.”

Maryland’s giants were there, too. Phillips Seafood served up fried crab claws, although it long ago gave up on Chesapeake blue crabs in favor of an endless tide of blue swimming crabs from the Indian and Pacific oceans.

Handy Seafood was pitching its frozen Chesapeake softshell crabs, alongside Hot Honey and Korean Crunch shrimp, to groceries and institutional kitchens.

And people like Tal Petty were there.

The owner of Hollywood Oyster Co. in St. Mary’s County, he’s been attending the show longer than any other small operation in Maryland.

“Everyone I could ever want to do business with is here,” he said.

Oysters, crabs and blue catfish.

To chefs from Kansas City or caterers from Canada, it’s seafood from a spot on the map with a storied history.

The Maryland Department of Agriculture paid $50,000 for display space and opened it to six small companies big enough to offer a product and deliver it consistently.

“A chef in Kansas City doesn’t give a damn about you having bad weather,” Petty said. “He’ll just go somewhere else to get his oysters.”

For Maryland, this is big business. Before the pandemic, the seafood industry contributed $288.8 million a year to the state economy. That’s far behind poultry and forestry.

It could be bigger, but it’s a resource-based enterprise. Rockfish is in decline, and crabs have had several bad years. Venezuelan blue crab is smothering local producers with cheap imports.

Seminars at the show covered topics ranging from the rising cost of seafood to achieving sustainability, from problems in the grocery store seafood case to microplastics flooding the world’s waters.

Back in Annapolis, the state Department of Agriculture, producers and environmentalists proclaimed “Chesapeake Oyster Week” from March 21-31 to promote legislation that would update fisheries management and protect restoration funds from budget cuts.

All that was distant noise for Petty.

He didn’t even bring his bestselling Sweet Jesus oysters to the show.

You may have never had one, because only 10% to 15% of these shellfish are sold in Maryland. But Garden & Gun magazine, a sort of Southern guide to the good life, listed them among the region’s 35 best.

“Meaty and surrounded by plenty of liquor, this upper Chesapeake Bay oyster is subtly sweet with mineral and mossy flavors,” reviewer Anne Tate wrote.

To grow that sort of food, you have to love cold water, hot summers and the constant strain of delivering what you bring ashore on time.

“These are all fish people,” Petty said. “You have to love it.”

This place smells like fish. Fried, broiled, raw. On skewers, in poke bowls and in deep freeze.

Everything you could imagine eating from the water is here. And some you can’t.

Lobster bisque pops? Thistle Seafood of Scotland has them.

Guinness Sweet Honey Mustard Melt & Panko Crumb? Canadian char farmer Icy Waters won the expo’s best new retail product award with it.

Looking for balls of salmon, fruit and vegetables you smash before you eat? The Plant Based Seafood Co. in coastal Virginia offers them in cran-rosemary feta, spicy pickle pineapple and hot honey jalapeno flavors.

How do you compete with that?

At Tilghman Island Seafood, they’re hoping blue catfish is the answer.

Maryland’s largest processor of the invasive omnivore, it is turning out 20,000 pounds a day in Talbot County in response to a call to eat our way out of an environmental disaster.

They’ve got blue cat dips for your crackers and smoked filets for nibbling on the end of a toothpick. They can discuss the nutrition, flavor profile and omega-3 fatty acids.

“Did you try the blue catfish tacos?” asked Norman McCowan, who’s leading the company’s expansion with this troublesome fish.

“And I want to hear what you think of that smoked catfish!”

Hope for a solution to Faidley’s problem of success is ongoing.

The plastic wasn’t thick enough to keep Madison Bay’s sharp-edged shells from cutting through. And cardboard backing won’t hold up to a broil.

“You don’t want the oyster to be cooked through, but it should be hot and bubbling on top,” Hahn said.

Flying back to Baltimore Monday, Hahn and Sidhu plopped into their seats on the 8:15 p.m. Southwest flight back to BWI Thurgood Marshall.

Hahn predicted the show would get her what she needed.

“Eventually.”