Saving Seafood

MAINE: Mussel farm sees potential in scallops

June 1, 2021 — In mid-May, Alex de Koning climbed down into the hold of the Stewardship, the former military landing craft that he and his family have used for years to help grow mussels in Frenchman Bay, and sat at what looked like a giant sewing machine.   

He grabbed a pair of scallops that had just been pulled out of the farm’s nets, lined up the small notches near the bivalves’ hinge and stepped on a foot pedal.  

A drill bit dropped down and pierced through both shells. When the bit pulled up, a black pin followed back up through the holes and attached the scallops to a rope. Then a claw pulled the rope a few inches, setting up a spot for another pair of scallops to be attached.   

This small three-act play took only a couple of seconds but could revolutionize the industry in Maine and cement scallops alongside its more famous farmed counterparts in the state.   

What the machine does is quite simple, but it mechanizes what would otherwise be an incredibly labor-intensive process. It also speeds up the farming to a point where it could become more economically viable for sea farmers as well as other members of the working waterfront who might be looking to diversify their work during turbulent times.  

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

These machines from Japan could put scallop farming in Maine on the map

April 30, 2018 — A project in Maine, boosted by a new grant, would establish the first semi-automated commercial scallop aquaculture operations outside Japan.

The $300,000 grant to CEI, a Brunswick business development organization, from the Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research of Washington, D.C., will help fund efforts to test the economic viability of cultivating scallops on ropes at aquaculture sites in Maine’s coastal waters.

As part of that effort, Bangs Island Mussel in Portland and Pine Point Oyster in Scarborough are testing out machinery made in Japan that should help automate much of the labor-intensive process of attaching and growing scallops on ropes vertically suspended in the water.

Testing and possibly modifying the machinery is just one of multiple angles in trying to develop a market for farmed scallops from Maine, according to Hugh Cowperthwaite of Brunswick-based Coastal Enterprises Inc.

CEI, which is administering the three-year grant, also plans to conduct market research to gauge the potential demand for scallops grown in such a manner, and to write a “how-to” manual for interested aquaculturists, Cowperthwaite added. Rope-grown scallops likely would have to serve a specialty market to be economically viable, he said, because they cannot match the high volume and relatively low production expense of the Northeast’s wild scallop fishery.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

 

Japan gives visiting Mainers the scoop on scalloping

October 18th, 2016 — A group of Maine fishermen from Cape Elizabeth to Stonington traveled to northern Japan this month to study mechanized techniques for growing scallops.

Funded in part by a grant from the United States-Japan Foundation, the 10-person group traveled to the coastal region of the Aomori prefecture to learn about the machines that the fishing and aquaculture cooperatives there use to grow scallops on vertical lines suspended in the sea, a farming method proven to speed up their growth. The group also learned about shellfish processing and value-added shellfish products.

“We want to get key people there to see what’s possible in scallop farming and to believe it can be replicated in Maine, although at a much smaller scale,” said trip leader Hugh Cowperthwaite, fisheries director for Coastal Enterprises Inc., which promotes rural economic development. “This exchange allows us to make new and deeper connections. Can this industry find its footing and create jobs in Maine?”

This isn’t the first time that Mainers have traveled to Aomori, which is more than 6,200 miles from Portland. The Japanese shellfish community started the information exchange in 1999, with a focus on how to collect wild seed and grow scallops from juveniles to adults. During Cowperthwaite’s first trip in 2010, he learned how Japan has mechanized several of the most labor-intensive steps of scallop farming.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald 

Maine fisheries experts head to Japan to learn scallop practices, buy machinery

October 4th, 2016 — Expanding on earlier visits to Japan, 10 aquaculture and fisheries experts from Maine are headed for Aomori Prefecture in the northern part of Japan’s main island of Honshu to learn successful techniques to grow scallops and to buy machinery to help harvest them.

“Sea scallops are among the most lucrative commercial marine species caught in the United States,” Hugh Cowperthwaite, fisheries project director at Coastal Enterprises Inc. (CEI), of Portland and the trip leader, told Mainebiz as he was preparing to leave for Aomori last Friday. “The nationwide landings value of sea scallops remained high in 2013 and was ranked fourth among all species with a total worth of $467.3 million. In 2015 the Maine wild caught scallop season witnessed prices at $12 per pound for 20-30 counts … [and up to] $16 per pound for 10 counts.”

Maine’s scallop industry was worth $5.7 million in 2015 for 3,770,760 million live pounds of scallops, down from 2014’s $7.6 million and 5,042,648 live pounds, according to the Maine Department of Marine Resources. The per pound price remained similar however, at $12.70 in 2015 and $12.67 in 2014.

Read the full story at Mainebiz 

Maine scallop farmers borrow from Japan in test to expand fishery

June 13, 2016 — Maine sea farmers are taking a page from Japan (again), an industry titan, to test a new method of farming scallops they hope will grow larger mollusks, and grow them faster than current methods do.

The experiment, in which sea scallops are pinned in pairs to vertical ropes suspended in the ocean water, exposes the animal to more water flow. That, in turn, causes them to open and close their shells more often to feed and helps their adductor muscle, the part that Americans eat, grow larger through exercise during the scallops three-year seed-to-harvest cycle. Farmers hope the “ear-hanging” method will allow them to develop their test farms into commercial-scale operations, which are needed to keep up with rising consumer demand.

And they hope that three scallop pinning, drilling and cleaning machines that a Maine-based investor is bringing to the state from Japan will help them rein in the high labor costs of ear hanging, so they can turn a bigger profit.

The state has granted a handful of limited leases to test the potential market, tapping into the small, tight-knit network of farmers who already raise oysters, clams, and mussels in leased state waters up and down Maine’s 3,500-mile shoreline. These demonstration projects will help scientists determine which husbandry methods, nutrient mix, hanging heights and water temperature grow the biggest, fastest, and healthiest scallop meats, and if it’s profitable enough to become a commercial aquaculture fishery.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald