February 12, 2019 — The largest ever oyster farms in Southeast Alaska could be coming soon. That’s in line with the state’s Mariculture Task Force that sees the potential for a $100 million industry in Alaska.
Silver Bay Seafoods has been buying and processing salmon and herring at its plant in Sitka for the past decade.
The company says it wants to do something new.
“Alaska waters produce the highest quality seafood products in the country, if not the world,” said Tommy Sheridan, a former state fisheries biologist who now works as a company representative. “There is significant demand for Alaska oysters.”
Silver Bay recently chartered a boat to take a group of local business people, academics and seafood industry boosters to see the site of its oyster venture about 13 miles from Sitka’s harbor.
It’s in a cove near rocky shoreline. Not much to see – yet.
“If this were to go through, what you’d see here would be a series of rafts that we’d use to suspend oysters from,” Sheridan tells the group.