A Family Adventure and a Beautiful Farm:
Glacier Point Oysters - Halibut Cove, ALASKA

Greg and Weatherly Bates, and the product

Weatherly and Greg Bates are having an adventure.

Not only are they shellfish farmers - usually adventure enough for anyone - they are creating their enterprise in Alaska.  The closest town is Homer; a place often referred to as 'The End of The Road,' and even Homer is a 30 minute boat ride from their community of Halibut Cove.  Kachemak Bay, the water body separating Halibut Cove from Homer, barely gets above 10 degrees C, and Alaska is, well…..it's Alaska.

So it's remote, but their place out in the wilderness is stunning.  As noticeable as the scenery however is the enthusiasm and expertise they bring to their shellfish business.  Their attitude is infectious, and leaves one with a confidence for their success. 

The community of Halibut Cove is straight out of a storybook:  houses hard by the shore and their backs up to steep hills of spruce and birch, sea otters and big halibut in the water, 20+ feet of tide, and a sense of optimism that comes from people who know how to do things themselves. 

The Bates' came to Alaska five years ago, specifically to start shellfish farm, and to have an adventure while doing it. They'd been growing oysters in Maine for several years, in the St. George River, but were looking for new challenges.  Georges River Oyster Company had good success in producing a quality product, they ran the business for Phyllis Wyeth; herself a longtime supporter of shellfish farmer, and who's strongly believed in the use of aquaculture as a way to educate young and at-risk students.  At Georges River, they had to deal with the various issues that most shellfish farmers face: cold water, fouling and predators, effective marketing, and in being an aquaculture enterprise in a part of the world that's heavily used by other interests such as lobster and scallop fishing, recreational boating, and the constant pressure of shoreside waterfront owners who want a spotless view.

Weatherly and Greg in Maine, back in the day.

With those experiences in their back pocket, they took their honeymoon by heading out to America's great remaining Frontier, and looking for a place to literally set up shop. After visiting Cordova, Valdez and some other spots, they heard about Kachemak Bay and Halibut Cove.  Once they got there, they found several members of the community who were quite supportive of a young couple who wanted to move out there and start a business, and that was that.  Two children later - Rockwell, age 4 and Vera, age 2 - and what you have is a family that's living a life that can't be described as easy in any aspect, but which is enviably full of rich experiences, stories worth telling, and listening to. 

Glacier Point Oyster currently focuses on producing Pacific Oysters, Crassostrea gigas. Seed comes from both Coast Seafoods Company and Taylor Shellfish Farms, delivered between June and August at 3.5-5mm.  The nursery system is a FLUPSY, that they have operated since 2007. A major seed shortage the last few years has meant that they could only plant 1 million out of a 5 million order, and this has impacted overall planting volumes in Kachemak Bay.  Alaska currently has very little hatchery production and the Bates' are working with industry members to  change this and help the industry becoming self sufficient, with in-state seed production.

Glacier Point works with other oyster businesses in the area; not all of those prospective 5 million oysters go to the Bates' operation.  Greg and Weatherly operate a paddlewheel-style upweller that's now owned by the Kachemak Bay Shellfish Mariculture Association; seed are distributed to other growers in the region. The upweller itself was constructed and deployed courtesy of Ray RaLonde, an extension colleague with the Alaska Sea Grant program, and it's a doozy - 32 silos of 3-feet square.  The unit is fed 220V shore power utilizing a rheostatically-controlled direct-drive unit.  The electric drive also means that it's really, really quiet, which is a nice bonus.   A moving gantry and remotely-operated winch allows Greg to service the silos for cleaning, grading and other maintenance.

Upweller, moored in Halibut Cove

Oysters can stay in the silos for up to a year.  The goal is to get the 3.5mm oysters up to about 20-25 mm in size, so they can be planted out in the field. Even with fast-growing gigas, the first year's growth is pretty slow in these temperatures.  When we visited in mid-September, the July crop of oysters were about 10-15mm in size, and water temperature was on the decline.  That crop was destined to stay in the upweller all the way through next July or so.  Since the operating costs of the upweller are so small, this seems a good strategy, and as we saw later, they see some amazing growth in the second year, when the oysters are planted to the farm. 

Grading on the upweller is either done with a hand sieve (for smaller sizes), or with the use of a reclaimed seed-onion grader.  Greg says the onion grader works well, and it was surprisingly quiet when he turned it on, although he'd like to modify it so that it will deliver three grades of oysters instead of two.  As it stands now, he has to grade the largest ones off, then switch grader plates to re-grade the smaller sizes into another two groups. 

 

Having been given the upweller tour, it was off to the farm.  Their boat, the Willawaw (meaning a sudden wind) is a 27' bow-picker that they found in Cordova; took the net reel off the bow, put on a davit and electric winch, and away they went - the boat services the farm and as a "station wagon".

The farm site covers 9 acres, and is in the same general area as  other local oyster farms.  Blue and grey buoys show where the gear hangs; depths are between 90 and 180 feet or so, too deep for bottom planting or bottom cages.  Greg has things set up for 50 stacks of 10-tier suspended cages per longline, and currently he has 8 lines deployed for a total of 4000 cages.  The cages themselves have plastic coated wire from Riverdale Mills, but the plastic rails and corners are from Aqua Pacific Wire Mesh.  The system allows for a lot of flexibility in cage design according to what the grower needs, especially accommodating changes in cage dimension and mesh size and wire weight. Greg and Weatherly favor 2' square cages, with 1" wire.  Smaller oysters are placed in cages with a plastic mesh liner, but larger oysters go into unlined cages.  Each stack of cages is set along the horizontal longline, in between a buoy: the thinking is that the up-and-down motion of the buoys is too severe to hang a cage directly below, and that by putting the cages in between a buoy, wave action is moderated.  This keeps the strain on the cages to a minimum, and allows the oysters to have a more gentle ride, which probably pays off in more continuous feeding. 

      Video: Greg with one of the cage stacks; note the fouling - a patchy pattern, cause unclear


Fouling is an issue as for any farm, and their main problems are macroalgae, barnacles and a mussel set.  To handle all this, Greg built a hot-dip tank.  Stacks of trays are dipped for 30 seconds in the tank, which is heated to 130 degrees; and he acknowledges that experience definitely plays a role - more or less time may be required for best results, depending on the situation. The dip treatment generally takes care of any problems though, and he plans on dipping each cage once per season, so it's a manageable process.  The dip tank itself is heated by two flamethrowers - each flamethrower is set into a 4" tube, and the tube forms a U-shape inside the tank.  He says it's important for the outlet tube to be well extended vertically, so the rising heat creates a draw of air through the tube. 

Dip tank, laying on its' side - Greg shows that one end of each U should be pretty tall, to promote good air flow

Oysters stocked to the farm at 20 mm will take one to two growing season to reach about 70 mm, or about 3 inches - so growth in the second year can is pretty quick, although Glacier Point aims for a little more time to get the oysters deeper. Pacific oysters are beautiful creatures, with fluted and crenellated shells, and colors of yellow, white, black and purple.  Because they grow so quickly, it's important to get them pruned up a bit through tumbling, so they increase in shell depth and meat weight too.

Hydraulically-driven grader does dual duty as a tumbler, too...

Most of the time, Greg does the work on the farm and Weatherly takes over with the grading, tumbling and filling orders.  Often as not, their kids help out too, and they're getting a first-class education in both marine biology and self-reliance.  Grading is done via a tube-style sorter, and this does the dual job of tumbling, too.  Product ready for market is taken to the mainland once per week, and they are currently servicing markets in Homer, Anchorage and the lower 48. Their eventual goal is to bring 500,000 to market every year, and to that end, they've been working on their wholesale strategy - another place where their experience in Maine will serve them well.  Overall, the market has been very receptive and prices have been strong at about $0.70 apiece.  Given the taste of their product - plenty of brine, surprisingly creamy and sweet, and with a hint of bite in the finish - I'm quite sure they'll continue to have success in the marketplace. 

So with this enterprise growing on its path in good shape, they are embarking on Part 2 of the full farm plan, which is a mussel-growing operation, using the Kames-style rafts that they were familiar with in Maine.  With some funding from the state, they will be setting up three rafts this fall and winter (weather conditions permitting) and setting up a processing line. They get a good wild set of mussels, and their observations so far indicate that they're looking at a 24-month growout schedule.  Since we had some of the wild-set mussels for dinner during the night of our visit, I can also attest as to the meat yield and excellent taste of the local  product.  Their principal problem is likely to be predation by sea otters - these marine mammals have greatly increased in population in recent years, and they definitely prefer mussels, especially the larger sizes; just about the time the mussels are set to get to market (…figures - but it's farming, right?).  That said, they plan on modifying the east-coast predator net approach, and feel that they've got a workable solution identified.

The wild-set mussels were full, and delicious, with a distinctive taste.  Yowie!

It was a beautiful dinner.

It sure was an enjoyable and exciting visit: an ambitious shellfish business operating in a breathtaking setting, a young family engaged in a real Alaskan adventure, and beautiful oysters on the plate here in Halibut Cove.  This blog post does not begin to cover all the things that could be written about our short stay (bad weather, fantastic geology, curious black bears, wintertime life in a community of 25 people, etc etc etc), but you can be sure that you'll hear more about Glacier Point Oysters in the future.

Glacier Point Oysters.  Find them, Like them on Facebook, and then........Try Them!