October 4, 2018 — Back when Lauren Gray was working for Commercial Fisheries News, she wrote a couple of feature stories about aquaculture.
“I thought it was really neat,” she said. “But at the time I didn’t have any idea I was going to become an oyster farmer.”
A few years later, when she got a job teaching science, reading and writing at the Ashley Bryan School, she and her husband Josh moved to Islesford. And soon after that she began working in the summers as a sternman for lobstermen Ricky Alley and Danny Fernald.
“I just loved being on the water all the time,” she said. “So, I started thinking about what I could do to make that a life.”
She decided that operating an oyster farm was the answer. She started it three years ago on eight 400-square-foot Limited Purpose Aquaculture (LPA) sites in The Pool, which is nearly surrounded by Great Cranberry Island. She leases the sites from the Maine Department of Marine Resources.
After teaching for five years, Gray left that job when school ended in June to devote herself full time to the business of raising oysters. She sold her first oysters — an order for 24 dozen — the weekend before Labor Day.
“That was pretty exciting,” she said.
“It took them three years to grow to cocktail size, about two-and-a-half to three inches. I’ve just been selling them to people locally. I have a little sign-up sheet at the Great Cranberry General Store.”
Gray said she plans to work on obtaining a license that will allow her to sell her oysters commercially.