Scallop growth trial update - October 2013

On Oct 30, 2013 Chris Vonderweidt (ME DMR) and I visited Kevin Scott at the Salt Pond site, and Marsden in Stonington. With us were Bill Trotter and Gabor Degre of the Bangor Daily News; they took a bunch of photos/video and Bill put together a nice piece from the day, viewable at:

http://bangordailynews.com/slideshow/cages-in-maine-pilot-program-could-be-first-step-toward-farmed-scallops/

Scallops continue to do well at both sites, and we still see effects of density happening too: there is a lot of growth sideways (Shell Width) and the shells are standing taller too (Shell Depth).  We have started to collect a little data on the Shell Height/Shell Width ratio to capture this, but there's not much to report on there yet.  Attached is a graph that summarizes growth at the three sites over time. This might be useful as we home in on the right times of year to do thinning: looking for the times when the growth curve starts to deflect downward. On the other hand, we've handled scallops more frequently that would likely occur in a production setting, and to that end, I could see how our growth might be slower, because of the added handling stress.

At Marsden's site, the Aquatrays got nailed with a pretty decent barnacle set, including the scallops inside the cages, though the shellfish bags seemed to avoid this more or less...unclear as to why that was.  Mortality at both sites was near zero.

As you'll see from the chart below, I made an error in restocking the low-density cages out in Stonington, so that will throw results off a bit, but at least we know about it....the density should have been lower.

Roe development was pretty good at both sites; it seemed that in Blue Hill there was less resorption or spawning - gonads seemed fuller, but still decent at both sites.  Bummed that I didn't get any good shots of this, but Bill Trotter also has a Tumblr site, and there are some shots there..

http://billtrotter.tumblr.com/

Shell Heights and growth rates:

                                 BlueHillLOW   BlueHillHIGH   StonLOW  StonHIGH
Prior average (mm)   52.1                 49.3                    64.43          56.1
Current Average        67.48               60.83                  70.59          62.1
#days                        180                   180                     98               98
Difference                 15.38               11.53                  6.16            6.0
growth/day (mm)      0.0854             0.0641                0.0629        0.0612
prior stocking            47                    94                       24               80
current stocking        24                    66                       29               60


Biotoxin samples were taken from both sites.  So far, all samples tested have been clean for PSP, more data to come on presence/absence of DSP and ASP. 

This is the growth since first cages were stocked in 2012. You can see the effect of site, and the differences between the low-density group (30% bottom coverage) and the high-density group (60% bottom coverage)

Here's a nice set of scallops from the Blue Hill Salt Pond site (Evan Young and Kevin Scott); smooth shells indicate low stress.

Two year classes on the Sand Island site (Marsden Brewer); the difference in shell size is due to one year's growth. Pretty encouraging.

Seaweed Scene 2013

Readers of this blog will have seen some details of the recent work to transfer the technology of seaweed cultivation to shellfish growers in Maine, and to help the networking process for people and organizations excited about the opportunities for seaweed production in the region.  This project was funded by the Maine Aquaculture Innovation Center, and truth be told, it's been one of the most fun, informative and rewarding projects I've worked on, in my 15 years with Maine Sea Grant.  Fright, dismay and wonder aside at being 15 years in the same job, I'm pretty proud of our work in this vein, and am looking forward to future developments. 

A full room at the Hutchinson Center for the Seaweed Scene 2013

It is clear that there is huge enthusiasm about seaweed.  Players like Ocean Approved and VitaminSea Seaweed have brought new energy to an industry that has its own long and interesting history, with groups like Maine Coast Sea Vegetables, Maine Seaweed, North American Kelp, Source Inc. and a few others.  This mix of new and established companies has fueled a vibrant discussion in recent years, and that excitement has spread to a wide group of other enthusiasts.

The Seaweed Scene sprang out of these observations as a way to bring people together - simply to get them in the same room, to have a chance to hear what's going on around the region, and really just to network.  With so much being new, the timing was good for encouraging the face-to-face time, and let the seeds sprout where they may. 

Charlie Yarish, Sarah Redmond, and Shep Erhardt

We held our first Seaweed Scene last year, and the SS '13 was the second in what we hope will be a continuing effort. About 115 people filled up the big meeting room at UMaine's Hutchinson Center in Belfast, and we had a full day program of research and activity updates, free time to talk, a needs-assessment session, and even a how-to session in the evening, taught by Paul Dobbins and Bill Flahive of Ocean Approved, and Dr. Charles Yarish of UConn - probably the guy most responsible for transferring seaweed cultivation expertise to people here in the Northeast and possibly the US.

As of this writing, Sarah Redmond, Beth Bisson and I are compiling presentations, notes and other information to be delivered to the Maine Sea Grant website, and you can expect more details to posted there in the near future:

http://www.seagrant.umaine.edu/seaweed/seaweed-scene-2013

...and don't let me forget to thank colleagues at ME SG for their help and expertise: Kathy Villarreal, Lynn Wardwell, and Ron Beard, who guided us so skillfully through the day. 

For now though, seaweed producers and others are taking some really important and exciting steps, and it sure has been fun to be a participant.  More to follow, no doubt, and perhaps even seaweed coming to a coastline near you.

Larch Hanson (Maine Seaweed) and David Myslabodski (Great Sea Vegetables) and probably 80 years experience between them. 

Isabelle Gendon-Lemieux (Merinov, Quebec CA), Emilie Gouhier (Univ. of Caen, France) and Carter Newell (Pemaquid Mussel Company) compare notes. 

Seth Barker and Sarah Redmond review their progress during the MAIC project and follow-ups - they have grown some wonderful-looking and delicious dulse over the past year.  Looking forward to more!

Charlie Yarish, together with Paul Dobbins and Bill Flahive (both from Ocean Approved) put on a great workshop on kelp production after the Seaweed Scene. Here they are demonstrating how to generate spores from reproductive kelp plants.  A manual on kelp farming is nearing completion and will be available soon.

April 8, 2013
Okay - so we've got this pilot project in scallop aquaculture and it's moving along nicely. Two Friday's ago I made a run up to visit with Marsden Brewer, and to check on the scallops at his site.  I was blown away by how fast the scallops are growing, and how clean the cages were.  Short story - the scallops grew about 20mm between October of 2012 and late March 2013.  Since I'd been wanting to mess around with iMovie, this was my chance to be a director.  Enjoy the little film below - music courtesy of my brother-in-law, Harry Pike.  We are both available for movie- and musical direction, so I'll expect Hollywood to be ringing. Here you go:

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!

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!