November 2, 2023 — On a sandbar just off the coast of Barnstable one recent windy morning, Corey Hendricks picked up a metal mesh bag. It’s one of 125 large bags laid out, all full of young oysters.
“Once they get big enough like this, they’re going to go pretty much straight in the cage,” he said.
Hendricks poured the oysters from the bag into one of 100 cages lined up on the sandbar, then evenly spread out the shellfish to line the bottom.
This setup doesn’t look like the typical image of a farm, but that’s what it is: instead of agriculture, it’s aquaculture. Hendricks said the changing tides jostle the oysters and help them grow.
His company is called Duck Island Oysters, and his farm is 2 acres of offshore public land controlled by the town of Barnstable.
“I have roughly a half a million oysters,” Hendricks said. “And last year we planted 200,000 quahogs. This year another 200,000.”
Shellfishermen in Massachusetts farmed nearly $37 million worth of oysters and quahogs in 2022. Unlike other fisheries, shellfishing is regulated locally by individual cities and towns. But in some Cape communities, there’s been a hot debate over changing those regulations and what it would mean for the future of the industry.