In their efforts to raise American oysters (Crassostrea virginica), Eric Horne and his wife, Valy Steverlynck, are on the cusp of a new sort of generational fishery that’s likely to become more prevalent in Maine. When Eric was born 33 years ago, his father, Peter Horne, and his friend, Dana Wallace, were experimenting with quahog aquaculture in waters off the Horne family property in Freeport. Eric and his older brother, Christian, who now raises oysters at Island Creek Oysters in Duxbury, Massachusetts, were exposed to aquaculture from day one.
“My brother and I were always in boats and playing around the dock while Dad was working on the mud flats,” Eric says. “We’d build fires and cook mussels and clams. We were constantly surrounded by shellfish.” He and his brother helped out as they grew older, and Eric also worked at Brewers Marine in South Freeport. In 1998, he decided to leave Maine to enter Brown University, where he completed a B.A. in international relations, and met Valy, who had come to the United States from Argentina to study fine arts. After college, Eric taught school for a while on Cape Cod, then completed an M.Ed. at Harvard and worked as an education consultant in Boston. Valy completed an MA in Fine Arts at the University of Wisconsin, and worked as a designer for an architectural firm in Boston.
Each summer for several years, they returned to help Eric’s dad with the commercial oyster farm he, Wallace and others had begun in the mid- ’90s. It didn’t take long for Eric and Valy to decide that working together oyster farming in Maine was infinitely preferable to the rat race in Boston, where they had little time together and faced the unappealing prospect of someday having to put their children in full-time day care.
They returned to Maine in 2000 and began working in partnership with Eric’s father at Maine Oyster Farms. While they have never regretted the move – both enjoy working outdoors, and Valy says being on the water gives her the same feeling of wide open space that she enjoyed as a child growing up on a cattle ranch – they have discovered the truth of a definition of “entrepreneur” Eric once heard: “An entrepreneur is a person who works 24 hours a day for himself to avoid having to work 8 hours a day for someone else.” Despite the long hours, they are happy to be in a position where their 11-month old son, Maximo, can oversee all operations from his backpack seat.
Like any farm, Eric and Valy’s year follows a cycle of planting seeds, tending them, transferring tiny seedlings to a nursery and then the larger seedlings to a grow-out plot. In late May, they obtain oyster seed about the size of a baby’s fingernail from Marshall Point Sea Farm in Port Clyde and Muscongus Bay Aquaculture in Bremen. These are placed in upwellers installed in dock-like structures they have built for the purpose. The docks are placed in an eight-foot space rented at a marina, where they serve a second function by providing additional tie-up space for small boats. Water is circulated through the upwellers by a small ice breaker motor, providing a rich source of nutrients for the seeds, which quickly increase in size.
Because upwellers require constant vigilance to prevent overcrowding and fouling, Eric and Valy visit each two times a day over a six-week period to sort seed and remove oysters that have grown the fastest. These are placed in other upwellers until they are approximately one-half inch in size. Then, Eric and Valy begin to transfer them to plastic mesh ADPI bags in a floating nursery where the baby oysters will grow into juveniles. The bags, which have flotation provided by sections from foam “noodles” children use to float in the water, are suspended from one end on a line stretched between buoys. They float on the water and the oysters receive nutrients throughout the tidal cycle.
Several times during the summer, Eric and Valy flip the bags to allow the sun to dry and kill algae that collects on the side that has been in the water. This improves water flow through the bag. They also remove small oyster drills from the bags, as well as baby starfish that latch on and sneak through the bag’s wide mesh. If they miss a starfish, says Eric, “By the end of the season, you have this big fat happy starfish and no oysters.”
Some growers sort oysters in ADPI bags to prevent overcrowding, but Eric and Valy say they have decided it is best to limit densities from the beginning and save the time that would be spent sorting sizes. They are also experimenting with nursery cages, which have racks that hold trays of oysters. These oyster “condos” stand several feet out of the water at low tide and are flushed by high tides.
Once the oysters are about two inches in size, which in good seasons happens by November, December at the latest, Eric and Valy begin to transfer the juveniles to growout sites where they will take two years to reach market size. Traditionally, if the oysters are not large enough by December, farmers have overwintered them in deep water in cages that protect them from green crabs, a major predator of small shellfish. But Eric and Valy, in their quest to simplify their operation since they do not employ helpers, have decided to plant all oysters and take a loss if necessary.
To expand their business to a size that will support their family, Eric and Valy must increase their number of grow-out locations. “There is no business without the growout,” says Eric.
They’ve scoured the coast from Kittery to Pemaquid to find suitable sites for growout, which are rare. In January of this year, they applied to the Maine Department of Marine Resources for two three-year, two-acre experimental leases in the Sheepscot River to determine if these sites are viable.
Eric and Valy have called, written letters and met with riparian landowners to educate them about exactly what will be involved at the lease site. They intend to use bottom culture at the sites; that is, they will toss the oysters overboard and let them take care of themselves – or rather, let the strong flow of waters through the site provide sufficient nutrients and, hopefully, favorable temperatures for their growth. At each site, they will plant one-third to one-half of the site every year to provide a yearly supply of marketable oysters once the first batch is ready.
Lease sites are marked at their corners by buoys to prevent other people from dragging at the site; otherwise there are no lines or visible equipment. Recreational boating, lobstering and fishing proceeds as usual at a site being used for bottom culture. If these sites work, Eric and Valy would harvest two times a week from late spring through late fall. Otherwise, they occasionally check on the oysters, sometimes by diving.
“Most of the people we’ve talked with have been so pleasant,” Valy says, “and they make up for the occasional person who has a mindset against any sort of aquaculture, however unobtrusive.” They have found that many people who are concerned about environmental impact do not understand that oysters, being filter feeders, benefit the environment by reducing nitrogen loading in the river.
Eric and Valy’s lease hearings are scheduled for Dec. 19 in Newcastle and Damariscotta. A favorable outcome, they say, will help make the difference in whether or not they can grow their “Mom and Pop” aquaculture business and carry on the family tradition.