Louisiana Is Oyster Land

Yes, dear Reader, it's true. 

I love Maine, and I love the oysters that we grow here. Ditto for shellfish grown in the Canadian Provinces, and lots of other states, too. 

That said, Louisiana might just be the Oyster Mecca of the United Shellfish of America.

A couple of months ago, I got a nice education about the Louisiana oyster industry; where it's been and where it's headed.  I'd been invited to participate in the LA Oystermen's Convention, and my host and subsequent guide was Dr. John Supan, of the LSU Ag Center and LA Sea Grant.  'Sup' took me around west and south of New Orleans, out to Grand Isle. It's a mythic region - the souther you go, the waterier it gets. It's a gradual transition where land and water travel hand in hand for a while, but then their arms straighten as they pull apart and get ready to go their separate ways…pretty soon they are only touching fingertips, and you're in a place where the shore is standing there waving 'Aloha' and the Gulf is waving too but saying "Hello" and "Welcome Home."  

Here's a shot from a bridge headed out to Grand Isle....and there's a lot more where this came from

Miles like this, with the road and bayou side by each: easy to guess at the scope of the fishing industry here, and to see the remains of a turbulent recent past.

So yeah, it's watery there, and the people who have lived there for all these generations have a deep knowledge: shifting channels, floating islands….and oysters. These men and women know oysters the way the Inuit know snow and ice. 

John introduced me to Levi Collins, who's been working the waters his whole life, and for generations before him - the Collins operation is in Golden Meadow, LA.  Even though I think Levi was pretty suspicious of me to start with, he opened up a bit when we started talking oysters, and you could tell that he has a lot of passion for his work and way of life.  John and I bought a small sack of oysters - oysters are sold in the full and half sack down there - and then John and I got a look at a Collins company oyster boat - an 'oyster lugger.'  The southern approach uses bottom planting and spat collection: clean shell is laid down in nursery beds, and then picked up and transplanted to growout sites, hopefully with a good load of oyster spat attached.  Oyster luggers are rigged to move all that shellstock efficiently, and I have to say, these rigs have style, not to mention equipment for dual dredges and a water cannon to move shell off the deck.  I could picture the boat making its way through the bayous and bays of southern Louisiana, birds in the cypress and gators in the water.  Some day, I'd not mind in the least being a deckhand and seeing how that all plays out in real life.  For another day, I guess.

Levi was good enough to let John snap a photo of us together. He grows a fine oyster...

I didn't take any good photos of the boat in total, but here's John, showing the chips on the wheelhouse paint, indicating the depth to which shell gets piled; for shelling the seed grounds, moving to growing beds, etc.

When we got to Grand Isle, the site of the hatchery that John operates, we also got a look at the small farm site just outside.  They have a small installation of adjustable longline gear there, and some examples of the new gear on the block - floating/submersible cages. There are currently two main versions of this gear, the Oyster Gro (See earlier posts for Rheal Savoie and his invention), and the Oyster Ranch. Both work on the same principle, and they are becoming increasingly popular - because it's a good approach.  Anyway - as I saw the longline system, and thought about all the water down there and the local knowledge of all things fishing, I can see that Louisiana is poised to get into the halfshell trade, and in a big way.

While much of their current production does go on to the halfshell market, much of it goes to shucked product too.  New potential growers are eyeballing suspension culture as a way to produce an oyster of predictable shape, somewhat faster growing period, and to control predation and therefore make production more predictable too. This has all kinds of benefits in the marketing and financing end.  Anyway, I got the sense that the potential down there is huge, which could certainly have market implications for all of us others who live in oyster-producing states.

That said, there is an another, unmistakable contribution that the state of Louisiana is already making, and which has positive impacts in our own market potential.  Simply: People In Louisiana Know How To Eat Oysters. Fried oysters. Chargrilled oysters. Oyster stew. Oysters as a picnic/football game/get-together sort of food. Oyster Po-Boys. Pickled oysters…..and the list goes on and on.

Up here in the Northeast, we just don't yet have the hang of the fully-diversified oyster menu (although we're getting there) and we need to do it. 

This main point post comes mostly from two cases, both from my visit. First: remember that sack of oysters that John and I bought from Levi Collins?  Well, they were eaten out of the back of John's truck, in the yard of his place on Grand Isle.  A couple of beers, some lemons, and a box of Saltines, and we were in oyster heaven.  Now, not many people in New England would consider oysters as (literally) a tailgate item - but a tailgate item they most certainly are.  We sat around and talked shop, told lies about fishing, and had a grand old Grand Isle time.  It didn't hurt that we were joined by Capt. Jules Melancon, who's many generations into the oystering business himself and now starting to grow oysters after the modern fashion.  He shared some of his own knowledge and it made the afternoon all the richer.  So boys and girls - think about growing oysters that people in New England can get at a price affordable enough to buy a bushel of 'em, and then we need to market the good time that a backyard oyster shuck really is.

Part of the carnage.....man, was that a good way to eat a mess of oysters!!

The Subject in Question.

Second story: Over the years, I've been very fortunate to have been befriended by Albert "Rusty" Gaude, a fellow Sea Grant extension agent who's territory covers some of the most southern of Louisiana's parishes.  He's an acknowledged expert in the culture of crawfish incidentally, but he's dealt with a lot of shellfish issues over the years too, and he just happens to be a really nice guy.  Anyway, he and his wife Ros were kind enough to take me to Superior Seafood, on St. Charles Ave. in NOLA.  On the list were char-grilled oysters: these are oysters still in a shell, covered with Romano and Parmesan cheeses, some butter and garlic and something else herb-ish in there (oregano?), and then set on an open flame.

This is a poor shot, but let me assure you - these were ridiculously tasty. Where is the nearest shop to get 'em up this way??

Boys and Girls  - I don't know if you've ever had these before, but I'm guessing my personal ingestion limit of these beauties lies somewhere between three and four dozen.  Absolute heaven.  More to the point however, they are a perfect bar food (easy to eat, great with beer, kinda salty), and they are great outlets for those oysters that might have a snaggly shape, overlarge, or otherwise not totally suited to the black-tie, finely-mignionetted halfshell oyster. 

What a great trip it was.  Louisiana has always been an oyster powerhouse, and is now poised to do so in a different arena of the shellfish world, but they have so much to teach us about how we view oysters as food.  I'm grateful to John and Rusty, and am eager for more research. 

Pass the crackers and an Abita.

More scallop goodness

There are more scallops in the water, over two other sites!  Marsden Brewer - long a leader in spat collecting, stock enhancement, and attempts to get a smoother permitting system - is now squared away with a site off his home port of Stonington.  Also, in a collaboration between fishing and farming, Evan Young (Blue Hill Bay Mussels) and Andy Mays (F/V Lost Airmen) have got some of the spat that Andy caught in the Blue Hill Salt Pond, where Evan has part of his shellfish operation. Bravo! to all involved.  It's been really nice, and an interesting process, to get the views from both the commercial fishermen and the aquaculturists; these groups of course do not always agree, but when starting from the grass roots, it sure seems like there are ways to make this process of integration move forward with a minimum of intrusion to either. 

So, temp data loggers are in place, juveniles are in cages and presumably growing happily, and now it's a bit of wait-and-see until later in the summer, when we will hopefully get to start thinking about biotoxin testing.  If all goes well, this project will run at least through the end of next year, when some of the scallops ought to be ready to get the once over by chefs and the like - assuming that our biotoxin testing reveals levels within regulatory bounds. 

Marsden Brewer, F/V Lindsay Marie, hauling one of the scallop cages for inspection. Eventually, either a different cage or more probably a mast-and-boom arrangement will be needed, but for now, he can service the gear with the pot hauler and a little extra help (thanks Bob!)

Andy Mays (left) and Evan Young - not a great shot, but here we are on the edge of the salt pond, transferring juveniles from spat collectors into the nursery cages. 

Andy Mays, a longtime lobsterman and scallop diver - and now a proven whiz at fishing for scallop spat - with some of the beauties he's caught.

Before too long, I hope to post the results of a media visit that happened a couple of weeks ago, which covered a range of topics from scallop aquaculture specifically, to the integration of fishing and farming.  More to follow on that account, but for now it's comforting to know that the little scallops are becoming bigger scallops, and that we've got this process moving.

Baby steps in sea scallop aquaculture

An admittedly optimistic (over)statement:
Mark your calendars, because June of 2012 will be the month that the sea scallop aquaculture industry got moving in Maine. 

This is not to say that other important work has not already been done in the state before: Tommy Pottle's work in Cobscook Bay, Schuyler Belle's polyculture project before that, and goodness knows how much other experimentation happened in the past too, and all contributed to today's understanding.  Please also note that in previous posts I've highlighted many other folks who have significant experience with sea scallops, and who have graciously and generously agreed to share that knowledge with me - and by extension, other prospective scallop farmers.   That's important, and not to be missed.  That said, I'm gonna bet exactly 25 cents that we've got a start now that will take the Maine scallop culture endeavor further along than it has been to date, and perhaps further along than anyone in the US.  Okay - that's the end of boastful statements.

And to be fair, all the work done by Maine fishermen and scientists since 2000; in spat collection and stock enhancement, allows us to be where we are now. I'll single out Capt. Marsden Brewer and former DMR scientist Dan Schick, as well as Leslie-Anne Davidson of DFO in Moncton as extra deserving of notice, but there's a bunch of other folks too.  That's a whole different story, and one certainly worth telling, but I'm going to skip to the item of today for the time being.

The other morning I met with Nate Perry and his father Ed; Ed's got over 30 years as a lobsterman, and his son started an oyster farm a few years ago.  Nate and I have known each other since, and he grows a nice oyster indeed - Pine Points he call them, grown in the speedy waters of the Scarborough River.  Nate's been interested in sea scallops for a while, and so he, his dad and his brother Ben (also a lobsterman) set out some spat collectors last fall, hoping to catch a few.

For those of you who aren't familiar with them, a spat collector for scallops is a mesh bag, with more mesh inside it - all made of polyethylene. The bag mesh is pretty small; best size seems to be about 1.5mm, and the mesh inside is larger and more rigid. When you put some of the stuffing into the bag, the bag ends up puffed up, like a pillow.  The bags get set on a single up-and-down line, and if you put them out in the right place and at the right time (September generally, in Maine), you end up with scallops.  What actually happens is that the scallop larvae float their way into the bag, and settle out onto the mesh stuffing.  Since the scallop larvae are about 450 microns (0.45mm), they can fit through the outer mesh, and once they begin to grow, they eventually can't get back out through the bag. Voila! Scallop seed.

One of the bags that Nate, Ed and Ben set, with an estimated 300+ juvenile scallops inside. Scallop size was good, bags were clean, and few competing settlers were found inside. Great to see!

A very nice collection of beautiful juvenile scallops, ready for stocking to cages

The seed we checked out was pretty good size, and the bags were not too fouled at all. Moreover, the catch was almost completely scallops; just a few jingle shells (Anomia simplex), and nary a starfish to be seen in the whole shebang.  That's good.

So now, with the help from some development $ from Maine Sea Grant for cages,  and collaborating with 11 or so fishermen and shellfish growers, we'll have scallops grown around the coast so that we can monitor growth and mortality. We'll also take a look at effects of density, and compare results from our different sites.

In addition - and this is really, REALLY important, the Maine Dept. of Marine Resources has pledged support for biotoxin testing during this project.  The goal is to understand the toxin loads from red tides, in the different tissues of the scallops.  The reason why this is so critical is that scallops can accumulate biotoxins in their tissues, easily enough to make a person sick, or dead.  The meat (or adductor muscle) - the part that we Americans generally eat - does NOT accumulate those toxins to any real extent, which is good for everyone. But, if we're going to develop aquaculture as a going concern, we'll have to look at selling products like roe-on scallops, whole or live scallops, etc...and there are plenty of chefs who would love to get their hands on some beautiful whole scallops. It's those other tissues that are problematic - they accumulate the toxins from certain algae, and they can hold on to it for a long time.  So - by gathering information on biotoxins at each site, we can begin to get a picture of toxicity, and to develop the important monitoring and testing programs that will help to ensure that safe product goes to market.

Here is an adult female scallop, with a full roe sac (bright red). While normal spawning season in Maine is in July, this photo was taken in January; the roe sac will condition either for a winter spawn, or as a mechanism to store energy - the true reason is unclear to me at this point. The roe is also a desired product in the market, but it and the other tissues can carry dangerous levels of biotoxins, so proper testing and monitoring is absolutely critical. 

The field data on growth, survival, density and all those other husbandry issues will be matched up with the data we gather regarding product safety, and eventually we'll have a leg up from where we've been this last many years.

Also, I spent a very nice morning (by which I mean poor weather but great company and enjoyable work) the other day with Marsden and his neighbor Bob, retrieving spat collectors that Marsden had set last September. We steamed from Stonington out to Isle au Haut, where he'd had the bags out of the way for overwintering, and went through the process of counting, seiving, and stocking some shellfish bags.  Marsden has been expert in collecting spat for many years now, and although the scallops were smaller than they've been in recent years, he was still in the 3000+ per bag area.  

The stuffing inside the collector bag provides a nice, clean substrate for scallop larvae to settle. They then grow too large to exit the bag, and are effectively captured. This photo is a pretty nice set of small scallops; other settlers include jingle shells (Anomia sp.) and a few rock borers (Hiatella arctica), but otherwise is quite clean, for having been deployed 9 months.

So. We now have a couple of sites with initial stocking to cages, with more to follow.  I'm so excited I can barely stand it. The next months will be telling, and I'm looking forward to more work with the fishermen, growers and the DMR staff as this little experiment runs its course.  Stay tuned, scallop lovers!

The Homemade Bento Box - 1 February, 2012

And the good ideas just keep rolling.....

Today, Sarah and I visited with Blaine and Ginny Olsen, the owners and operators of Oceanville Seafood, up in Stonington, and also the relatively-new owners of Long Cove Oysters, named after the body of water that's nearly right spang in their back yard.  Blaine and Ginny had gotten some kelp lines from Paul and Tollef, and were game to join our project, so up we went, to check out their lines, and take some water quality samples.  Like a dud, I forgot the temp logger in the truck - will have to send it up for them to deploy.

Needless to say, Long Cove is beautiful, even though we went there on a cold, overcast day.  It was just about flat calm, and just a wonderful winter scene. Blaine, who's been clamming and fishing commercially in Stonington his entire life, narrated things about the place that made it all the more attractive: how, just near the head of the cove, there is 100 feet of water and many a halibut handlined out of there; how the packets used to come to the wharf at the head of the cove, freighted with steamer clams ready for pickling, or how the guy on the shore got caught with tons of marijuana a few years back - a boat was parking out front that just happened to be up from Colombia, and the people on the shore needed conveyer belts to move the stuff around.  It's great to have a tour guide with that kind of historical knowledge.

Anyway, off we went, and we got our samples in the cold weather, and Blaine took us around the place a bit.  I didn't get a great photo of him, but I think Sarah did, and I'll do my best to post it, but here's one of the two of them. One of the places of interest was a spot where the kelp grew well, and so Sarah just had to see all about it - she's a hardcore seaweed nut, that's for sure - and I mean that in the most complimentary sense.  Boy, did she smile! 

Blaine and Sarah checking out the local kelp crop

Clearly, this is a Kelp Enthusiast.

I've gotten a lot out of listening to people who know something about kelp, and this was no different; learning about the different tissue types, spawning process and seasons, etc.  When the topic of taste came up, I took a couple of bites on the 'wing' of the kelp, and I found it to be pretty nice indeed!  Very mild, crunchy, and would be great with all kinds of foods. so, I'm starting to feel like a real convert. 

We got back to their shop, and Ginny informs us that they've been smoking mussels, and asks if we'd like to try some. Easiest question of the day, because I am a smoked seafood nut.  As it turns out, and not unexpectedly, the mussels were delicious, so I'm betting that they've got a winner on their hands.

The unexpected part came later on when Sarah sends a few photos back, saying that she created essentially a little Bento box - sort of a Japanese lunch combo, on the fast-food-ish side - out of the kelp and the mussels.  One part of the kelp she boiled, and one she just chopped up. The boiled kelp became this absolutely gorgeous bright green, and when set with the mussels and the brown kelp - WOW!  I'm looking at the pictures drooling, and wishing I'd been there at suppertime.  Bottom line being: here is a dish that features all products from the sea - essentially 'sea meat and sea vegetables' in a combination that is delicious and stunning.  Our photographs are not professional, but I hope you get the idea.  This is a dish ready to go, and I heartily encourage you all to try it.  Who knows what other recipes and products will evolve in this area, but I'm already convinced, and looking forward to the next months and years in the aquaculture game - it's gonna be exciting.

The uncooked kelp on the left is just chopped up from the tender side pieces - the wings - and was added to miso soup. The kelp on the right was boiled for a minute or so, and became brilliant green.

Boiled kelp closer up; nice photo Sarah, and a gorgeous dish

And here's the Bento Box. Granted, it's in the container that the mussels came in, but you can pretty easily guess at the possibilities....

Why Tech Transfer is Such a Blast

A Little Reminder on Why Tech Transfer is Such a Blast

So, on the last day of 2011, our little Kelp and Mussel Team was to be found on the shores of Lamoine State Park, with the wind blowing about a steady 15-25, and a light rain, headed out to the mussel rafts to set out another 300+ feet of kelp lines.  Today, it was Carter Newell (Pemaquid Mussel Farm), Tollef Olson (Ocean Approved), Shep Erhardt (Maine Coast Sea Vegetables), Ron Hinkle (independent seaweed harvester), Sarah Redmond (Maine Sea Grant) and yours truly. Oh, and Polar, Sarah's dog - he stayed in her car, but played an important role later on.

We bounced around on the rafts, and fortunately, it was cool but not cold, probably 34 deg F; so much so that no gloves were needed, though we were all pretty bundled up otherwise. The winter has been so warm that the water was still pretty toasty too, and that didn't hurt.  Anyway, we got our lines set out, bounced around a bunch on the raft and in the boat, and we all stayed more or less dry.  During the whole time, there was a steady stream of discussion: about the project, about the mussel and seaweed industries, different strains of kelp and the conditions under which they grow, boats, markets, etc etc etc. 

It was this discussion that was so intriguing.  Tollef and Shep are to some degree in competition, as they both are looking to source kelp for their businesses.  Ron was skeptical of several aspects of the project, although he's hoping for success, and interested in following the project as it moves along.  Carter had at different points helped Tollef with mussel culture information, and then been a competitor when they were both in the mussel business, and now into a different relationship, since Tollef sold his mussel business and focused on seaweed, and has a lot of knowledge on seaweed to offer all the rest of us.  With all that background, there we were, ducking under the rain, excited to be testing this new approach, and happy as the proverbial clams to talk shop with one another. 

This isn't new either; talking shop is what it's all about, whether it's oyster farmers from the US and Canada, or fishermen from East and West Coasts, or potato farmers in The County and their Idaho counterparts.  The competitive environment always exists, but at the heart, there's almost always more to be found in common; people enthusiastic about their work, and facing a lot of the same problems in keeping their businesses alive and kicking.  The walls between are surprisingly fragile when both parties are trying to figure out something like having predators steal your crop, and the give-and-take that results is usually very productive.  Plus, it's fun. 

Which brings us back to the dog. 

In the photo below, Polar is obviously suspecting some trickery from the tennis ball on the ground, and remains at strict attention, to ensure that nothing gets by him, thank you very much.  In the background however, are Sarah and Ron (foreground) and Tollef and Shep.  They're talking.  It's getting late, we're all headed off to our New Year's fun, many of us have a long drive ahead, and we're wet and getting cold, but it's still too interesting to leave off, and so the talk continued. 

Tech Transfer, and Canine Attentiveness in Lamoine, Maine, Dec 31, 2011

Looking forward to the next round...

Off and Running

December 16 2011, Project Update

 A Pilot Project to Stimulate Seaweed Production on Mussel Farms in Maine

Funding: Maine Aquaculture Innovation Center, with lots of match from industry partners, and Maine Sea Grant

We're IMTA active, folks!  A couple of weeks ago, Tollef Olson, Paul Dobbins and Matt Moretti planted seedling lines out on Matt's farm in Casco Bay. That, I believe, made it the first kelp/mussel IMTA farm in the US, and we're pretty stoked about it. 

This week, Sarah and I met up with Tollef, and seeded in rafts on Peter Fischer's site in Walpole, and Joe Larrabee's site in Northport - they are both part of Pemaquid Mussel Farms.  We also met with Evan Young, of Blue Hill Bay Mussels, but it was blowing a gale from the south, and not a good day to be out on that site, given its' exposure. So, we ended up hanging the spools of seed lines off a float temporarily, until Evan can get back out and seed his raft in with them - should be no problem.

L-R: Tollef Olson,  Peter Fischer, Sarah Redmond

Anyway, on Wednesday, we started over at Peter's.  He wanted to hang the lines under one of his rafts, and he'd devised a plan to place one person at the far end of the raft (turned out to be me), and use a 'messenger line' to draw the longline through the seeding tube. Tollef and Peter worked on that end, since Tollef had the technique down for letting the line off the spool. Sarah took all kinds of photos, and helped out with the seeding end of things, and with equipment going back and forth.  Great to hear her talk about seaweeds too; biology and physiology, ecology; the whole nine yards. 

Juvenile kelps on seeding strings, around PVC pipe

The process is simple and effective.  Ocean Approved had done the hatchery work about 40 days ago, to produce the spores and then to set the spores on strings, which are wrapped around a PVC pipe.  Each pipe contains enough string to seed about 200 feet of line.  The horizontal longline is drawn through the PVC pipe, and the string is tied to the longline. As the longline is pulled through the pipe, the string unwinds, and spirals itself around the longline.  It'll take a few weeks for the young plants to 'step off' the string, and grow on to the longline, but once they do, their holdfasts will…well….hold them fast to the longline. 

It was cold to start, but we got into a rhythm,

Seed lines unspooling around longline

hanging lines at depths of either 3 or 7 feet. This is to test growth and quality in relation to sunlight; too much is not good and neither is too little.  About 9am, Pete Smith (Pemaquid Oyster Co) came rowing out to see what we were up to, and brought over some oysters - man, were they good!  Just out of the water, cold and salty…..yum.  After our little morning break, we kept going, and ended up with a total of 17 lines under one raft. 

Pete Smith (right) of Pemaquid Oyster Co - thanks Pete!

Peter's raft, seeded in!

Our water quality data collection includes sampling for nitrate and ammonia, so we gathered samples at the rafts and a short distance away, for baseline information, and then took some info on secchi depth and salinity. We set out an iBcod temp data logger, set to sample every 30 minutes - we can swap that out later, or leave it for the whole 4-6 month growout period.  The hope is to begin to draw some correlations between the growth we observe, and the measurements for these various parameters.  It certainly won't solve any specific puzzle, but might provide the right material for more focused research in the future.

The sun was coming out, and it was getting warm; things shaping up nicely. 

The afternoon was spent up at the Northport site; Joe picked us up in the skiff and out we went - Carter and crew were out there working on the middle raft, and we went to the northern raft and set in our lines there.  Since we'd used essentially the same setup as down in Walpole, it went pretty quickly, and we got the lines settled in with no delay.  More water samples, and a quick chat with the crew, and we headed back to the wharf.  The wharf itself is in the little community of Bayside, a little bit south of Belfast, and it's sort of a secluded little secret - like a summertime beach community, only without the beach.  I had Cape May in mind, for some reason, but anyway, lots of tidy and pretty houses set one close to another, facing a town common just up the shore from the wharf, and a great view across western Pen Bay, to Islesboro.

Joe Larrabee's site in Northport: harvest barge Mumbles and Tim Levesque (also of PMC) with his boat F/V Thunder Bay, working on predator nets, etc.

And that brought us to Thursday morning, and the aforementioned bad weather.  We stood in the parking lot talking about the project, the prospects for seaweeds along the coast, and how we were all looking forward to watching this particular batch of kelp grow.  Even there in the rain and the wind, it was pretty exciting; this is a new venture, with its own set of obstacles and opportunities, but nice to have some of the kelp lines already in and doing their work.  Evan will get a chance to set his lines out, and our next deployments will be on raft sites in Stonington and Lamoine (Pemaquid Mussel), and hopefully on the longline farm that Erick Swanson has for his company, Maine Cultured Mussels, out by Long Island in Blue Hill Bay.

European Oysters at the Downeast Institute, Beals Island, Maine

The European oyster, flat oyster, belon, or mud oyster all refer to the bivalve Ostrea edulis, native to western Europe and introduced into Maine waters near Boothbay Harbor in 1949. Ask a true oyster gourmand and they will call it the best oyster available globally. Ask someone who's got some experience growing them, or working with them in the hatchery, and you'll get a mix of smiles, gritted teeth and a downright Eeyore gloom. In the oyster kingdom, flat oysters have to be most persnickety, mysterious and tantalizing variety out there.

The European industry has fallen (forgive me) flat, and the production from the East Coast of the US and Canada is not going to take the world over, despite tries from very inventive and persistent folks. Ditto for the west coast, and there are two main reasons for this. The first is that a parasite called Bonamia, which affects the hemocytes (blood cells) of the oyster, and is responsible for periodic die-offs of wild and cultured flat oysters: an intimidating enough obstacle. The second – and the reason for this post – is that they are often troublesome in the hatchery.

Some of the juvenile flat oysters produced at DEI. 

Chris Bartlett photo.

Many oyster species are broadcast spawners, meaning that sperm and eggs are released directly into the water, in hopes that the one finds and fertilizes the other. But oh no, that's not good enough for the flat oyster. They have to go and be different, to the point that the female holds on to the eggs, and allows them to be fertilized by sperm in the incoming water. Then, she even goes so far as to allow the embryos to develop for a while attached to her gills, before then ejecting them as free-swimming larvae. Added to this the complexity, is the life-cycle of Ostrea being a “protandric hermaphrodite.” That is, this oyster has the capacity to change its gender twice during a single season – spawning as a female, then changing to a male for a while, then back again! All this causes a lot of difficulty for the hatchery manager, who needs to reliably produce millions of oyster larvae to be financially solvent.

Meanwhile, there is a limited supply of flat oysters to meet the demand, and even though demand is not as large as for say, the Eastern oyster, it's a dedicated following, and there is money to be made for them's that can grow and market the right product.

Which brings me to the Downeast Institute (DEI), on Great Wass Island in the town of Beals, Maine; and the name says it. You come out hear, dear (they say 'heah' and 'deah' of course – music to my Mainer ears), and you have indeed arrived Down East.

Dr. Brian Beal oversees shellfish production and research at DEI; he's a professor at nearby University of Maine at Machias, and he's been working with shellfish for a few decades now. He and his staff, Hatchery Manager George Protopopescu and assistant Kyle Pepperman have been trying to get their flat oysters through full production for a couple of years, and have had decidedly mixed success. In 2009, they had a good run, producing 100,000 juveniles, but since then have had little joy.

The main problem is in the larval phase; that roughly two-week period of time when the larvae have left the female, and are being fed and cared for by the hatchery. Worms and other animals that hitchhike on the shells of the adults end up spawning as well and their tiny offspring compete for food with the small oysters, or eat them, or just change the water quality to a poor state for oyster larvae. While the DEI staff have overcome a large part of this by the novel approach of spreading a marine adhesive over the shells (prevents the hitchhikers from spawning), they still have a bit of a problem to overcome.

Also, there seems to be a bacterium at play in the larval tanks, one that ends up killing small oysters such that they end up clumped up in a pile, dead. Brian, George and Kyle are experimenting with some prophylactic approaches for this, but I can tell you that she ain't solved yet.

So, when I stopped in to talk with George and Kyle on Monday last, George was realistic (not what you'd call giddy) about the chances for the upcoming spawn, while being optimistic about the effectiveness of their new procedures, and chances for success. If they are successful, then oysters will go out to cooperators in industry for nursery culture and growout. Since flat oysters like cooler, more moderate water temperatures than their Eastern cousins, and since we've got a lot of that kind of water around here in Maine, they are a reasonable species to culture, especially for the many fishermen in the state who are beginning to experiment with aquaculture.

Above: Dan Canfield, a shellfish grower out of Tenant's Harbor, Maine and a former commercial fisherman, has a few flat oysters on his farm, and hopes to begin going to market in 2011.

So, for now, my visit was a reinforcement of the promise and the problems with the flat oyster. A couple of years ago, I organized a session on O. edulis at the Northeast Aquaculture Conference and Expo (NACE) in Portland, and one of the titles in the session summed it up accurately. Dr. Andre Mallet, who hails from Shippagan, New Brunswick, and who is himself an accomplished scientist and shellfish producer, called the flat oyster the Beast of Sorrow. Sheesh. Nonetheless, given the allure of a steady supply of belons to the market, I'm sure that Brian and company will persist, and they are every bit as likely as anyone to succeed.

Aquaculture is not for the faint of heart.