Saving Seafood

A Maine clam could help fishermen as climate change pushes out other species

December 20, 2021 — Some commercially fished species in Maine have seen their numbers decline in recent years due to climate change, but one of the state’s clam fisheries is growing and could help provide another way for fishermen to earn a living.

Northern quahogs, also known as hard clams, are among a handful of fisheries including Maine oysters — most of which are grown at sea farms — seaweed, and baby eels whose harvest volumes and values have increased over the past decade. Meanwhile, others including northern shrimp, softshell clams — and even the state’s still dominant lobster fishery — have shrunk.

For Mark Cota, a Topsham fisherman who grew up in Harpswell, the money in quahogs (pronounced “ko-hogs”) has been good enough that this year he started harvesting them full-time.

“I’ve done it for like four years,” Cota, 33, said Friday, chatting on the phone while raking for the clams on the tidal New Meadows River, which separates the towns of Brunswick and West Bath. “The price is right, and I’m getting good at it.”

Read the full story at The Bangor Daily News

Opportunity, controversy grow for Maine’s aquaculture industry

November 8, 2021 — Joanna Fogg, perched at the prow of her boat, looks out at the 350 oyster cages rocking in the Mount Desert Narrows that make up the bulk of Bar Harbor Oyster Co., the business that she and her husband, Jesse, have spent the past seven years building from the ground up.

The black plastic floats, spread across about 22 acres, may not look like much to some – and may even be an eyesore to others – but Fogg hopes that one day, people will see them as beautiful.

Her farm may not conjure the same quintessential working waterfront images as a lobster boat and brightly colored buoy, Fogg said, but she thinks it should hold the same meaning: “This is what it looks like to feed people.”

And feed people she does.

Even with a projected harvest of about 100,000 oysters this year, Fogg can’t keep up with the demand of Bar Harbor, let alone a state that is rapidly growing its brand as a premier destination for farm-grown seafood.

Fogg’s business is just one of the hundreds of Maine sea farms contributing to the state’s successful aquaculture industry, selling oysters, mussels, seaweed and salmon as fast as they can be grown. The practice has been around for thousands of years, but only in the past few has it become a vital economic engine for the state.

But as more farms have cropped up, so have coalitions and interest groups concerned about Maine’s coastline being overrun by industrial-size operations that pollute the state’s pristine waters and take valuable bottom from Maine’s iconic, nearly half-billion-dollar lobster industry.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

Maryland oyster industry hoping for rebound as new season begins

October 26, 2021 — This time last year, Jason Wilford was preparing to bring his farm-grown oysters to a Thanksgiving pop-up sale in Easton.

Events like that one were something of a lifeline for Wilford, a newcomer to the industry. With the coronavirus pandemic raging as the weather grew colder in the fall of 2020, many seafood restaurants were closed or offered only carryout. There was practically nowhere for his first batch of hand-raised oysters to go.

Experts say covid-19 depressed demand for oysters, in part because shucking them wasn’t popular among diners looking for quick to-go meals. That sank prices for harvesters on the Chesapeake Bay.

This year, aquaculture farmers such as Wilford and those in the rest of the oyster industry — watermen, seafood restaurants and distributors — are hoping for a rebound in demand.

Read the full story at the Washington Post

Aftereffects of Hurricane Ida still being felt by Louisiana’s oyster-growers

October 12, 2021 — As Hurricane Ida plowed into the U.S. state of Louisiana and on to the Northeast last month, another storm surge of sorts swept through seafood markets, a brutal putdown to the local seafood industry’s slow pandemic recovery.

With heavy damage to local fleets, hard-hit Lafourche and Terrebonne parish bayou communities were cut off from power through the end of September, hobbling efforts to repair docks and bring back ice and shrimp packing.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

MASSACHUSETTS: Oyster Buyback Spawns New Ecology Program in Edgartown

October 1, 2021 — Prior to the pandemic, Ryan Smith, whose Signature Oyster Farm operates out of Katama Bay, sold about 30,000 oysters per week — nearly all of which went to restaurants and raw bars across the Northeast.

By March of 2020, with in-person dining all but completely shuttered, the number dropped to about 300.

“Everything just halted,” the veteran waterman recalled. “I was selling door to door . . . it was terrible. You didn’t know how long it was going to last. But obviously, it lasted a lot longer than anybody could have anticipated.”

And as demand dwindled, the oysters themselves did the opposite, growing too large and gnarled for ritzy raw bars. Farmers like Mr. Smith were left with a fisherman’s catch-22, unable to sell the properly-sized oysters when restaurants closed, and unable to sell the oversized oysters once they reopened.

“I’ve got some that are the size of my boot,” Mr. Smith said. “I’m a size 12.”

Now more than 18 months later, an innovative partnership between The Nature Conservancy and the Martha’s Vineyard Shellfish Group has found a solution, providing a new home for 200,000 overgrown oysters by buying them from Mr. Smith and fellow Katama Bay oysterman Scott Castro at a discounted price and re-seeding them in the Slough Cove section of the Edgartown Great Pond.

Read the full story at the Vineyard Gazette

 

‘We went to zero’: Connecticut shellfishermen seeking pandemic rebound

September 1, 2021 — Bobbing up and down in 194 feet of water in Long Island Sound on Tuesday, lobsterman Mike Kalaman made a point to boast about his favorite fishing grounds to the delegation of state lawmakers aboard his boat, The Dark Horse.

Pointing to the waters just beyond one of his blue-and-yellow buoys, Kalaman showed Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff where the border between Connecticut and New York crossed the Sound, adding that the water on the other side of the imaginary line was generally more shallow and less attractive for lobsters.

“Connecticut is blessed to have all this deep water,” Kalaman said, gesturing across the area he has spent four decades fishing.

Duff joined three other state senators Tuesday morning for a tour aboard Kalaman’s 36-foot lobster boat and the oyster fleet operated by Copps Island Oysters in Norwalk to learn about Connecticut’s shellfish industry amid ongoing environmental threats and more recent disruption caused by the pandemic.

Norm Bloom, the owner of Copps Island Oysters, said the health of the industry has been boosted by long-term efforts to curb pollution and improve water quality in Long Island Sound.

Read the full story at CT Insider

The rise of alternative oyster growing methods in the USA

August 25, 2021 — A new range of off-bottom cultivation techniques, backed by positive reports and state incentives, is beginning to supplement traditional oyster farming methods in Louisiana.

When many people think of oysters they envision a cluster of odd-shaped, rock-like objects, typically growing on some hard surface on or near the seafloor. According to FAO figures, in 1952 global oyster aquaculture production surpassed wild harvests for the first time – with 306,930 and 302,526 tonnes reported, respectively. Aquaculture production has consistently exceeded wild oyster harvests since that time, and in 2019 accounted for 6,125,606 tonnes, compared to 133,984 tonnes of wild-harvested. Traditional culture methods relied (and still rely, in many regions) on natural setting of wild larvae on suitable benthic substrates. But there are other ways to grow oysters, and these techniques can result in significantly greater production volumes.

Off-bottom oyster culture utilises trays, baskets, cages, or hanging lines/ropes mounted on racks or suspended from floats or rafts. This approach allows for more access to natural foods and avoidance of many fouling organisms and predators. Fouling organisms still occur, but one remedy that can be adopted in off-bottom culture involves regular exposure of oysters to the air (weekly or biweekly), in such a way as to inhibit growth and survival of fouling organisms, while oysters close their shells and wait patiently until they are re-submerged.

Read the full story at The Fish Site

Pacific Northwest heat wave causes vibrio bacteria outbreak in oysters

August 2, 2021 — A heat wave that sent temperatures into the triple digits for three days in the U.S. Pacific Northwest in late June and early July drove up levels of the vibrio bacteria in area oysters, causing record numbers of illnesses from the bacteria and prompting oyster recalls.

The Washington State Department of Health (DOH) reported 75 lab-confirmed cases of vibriosis as of Wednesday, 29 July, and said there are likely many unreported cases. According to figures provided by DOH, the previous record number of vibriosos cases through 28 July was 48 in 2018.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Your love for fresh oysters can help the planet

July 27, 2021 — We drop anchor and I learn the trick to the perfect shuck—gently work the knife into the back hinge—and slurp the freshest oyster I’ve ever tasted. The mollusk was harvested minutes earlier from the lineup of floating cages beside our boat in this secluded section of Maine’s Casco Bay.

“There’s a freshwater spring off Upper Goose Island that drains out right into the farm and cuts the salinity, so our oyster is much more bright and balanced, with a light cucumber finish,” says Cameron Barner, an oyster farm owner with an advanced degree in aquaculture, and my tour guide for the afternoon. “If you go upriver or eat bottom-planted oysters, you get a more minerally umami flavor.”

Oyster farm tours, like this one led by Love Point Oysters, and self-guided bi-valve trails are cropping up throughout the United States. COVID-19 stalled the trend but with travel restrictions loosening, oyster enthusiasts are once again back on track. Along the Maine Oyster Trail, which re-launched in June, tasting tourists can earn swag by “checking in” at various experiences and sites along the trail, including Love Point. Other trails can be found in Louisiana, Virginia, North Carolina, and Washington, the country’s largest producer of aquaculture.

Read the full story at National Geographic

Diners’ discarded shells help establish new oyster colonies

July 6, 2021 — Call it the seafood circle of life: Shells discarded by diners are being collected, cleaned and dumped into waterways around the country and the world, where they form the basis of new oyster colonies.

One of the latest such projects is taking place in Atlantic City, where a casino and two other restaurants are saving the shells left over from their diners. The shells are then collected by the state Department of Environmental Protection, and workers and volunteers with Rutgers and Stockton universities and the Jetty Rock Foundation load them on barges and dump them into the Mullica River.

That waterway is home to one of the last self-sustaining oyster populations on the Atlantic coast, according to Shawn LaTourette, the state’s environmental commissioner. The clam, oyster and other shells form the basis of new or expanded oyster colonies when free-floating baby oysters, known as spat, attach to the shells and begin to grow on them.

“You have the benefit not only of ecological restoration, but it has kept 65 tons of shells out of landfills,” said Scott Stueber, a fisheries biologist with the DEP. That helps the eateries save on waste disposal costs.

The program began in 2019 and currently collects oysters from the Hard Rock casino, the Knife & Fork restaurant and Dock’s Oyster House in Atlantic City. Several other casinos have expressed interest in joining.

Read the full story at the Associated Press