Chris Maloney, who with Tonie Simmons owns Maine’s newest shellfish hatchery, Muscongus Aquaculture, says reliability is the cornerstone of their business. Their mission, he says, is “to produce good quality shellfish and get it to growers when they want it and in the proper amount.” He emphasizes that they take their responsibility to the customer very seriously, knowing that if they do not deliver good product on time, a customer’s entire growout schedule will be disrupted.
To ensure that their business will be able to guarantee delivery when promised, Maloney and Simmons standardize protocols at the facility, back up each stage of the hatchery process with safeguards and watch carefully to catch problems in their early stages before they multiply.
From the beginning, they decided rather than attempt to install all the latest, most up-to-date hatchery technology, they would instead go with the safe and predictable practices, even though they are often more labor intensive. For instance, although they have installed “Hal,” a computerized monitor for their algae nursery that takes hourly readings of air pressure and water levels and light and will automatically dial several numbers if the power fails, they chose not to computerize other processes in the hatchery like cleaning the tanks and feeding the baby shellfish.
“Still, this is farming,” Maloney says, “and like all farmers, we can control a number of things, but we are at the mercy of Mother Nature. We are dependent on good water quality, and our scheduling and delivery can be complicated by year-to-year season changes.” If water temperatures warm up slower than normal for growers (as in Maine this year), and a grower who has ordered a million oysters for May 1 asks the hatchery to hold onto them for a week or so, it can throw off the hatchery’s production schedule.
Maloney and Simmons have worked separately and together in hatcheries for 17 years, including time at a Woods Hole commercial operation, and at Mook Sea Farms, Teel Cove and Marshall Point Sea Farm in Maine. In October, 1999, they started building their own facility on Simmons’s property in Bremen, and were grateful when several people from the local clamming community, which they now supply with seed, came over to give them a hand. They began production in January, 2000, shipping out seed that spring. The hatchery is managed by Sarah Lord, and Eric Peters is general manager of the business, which employs several people from the surrounding area.
The process to produce seed requires about four months of intensive, carefully monitored growth. If they are raising oyster seed (American oyster, Crassostrea virginica), the first step is to obtain broodstock from the area where the oysters will grow out and while nurturing them, adjust hatchery water temperatures to match those of the growout area.
When the broodstock arrive, they are dormant and accustomed to low water temperature. Maine broodstock might be at zero degrees Celsius. The broodstock are quarantined and tested to ensure health and viability, and divided into multiple groups – plans A,B, and C, to provide backup in case anything goes wrong such as the appearance of a foreign organism in their tanks. Over a five-week period, water temperature in the tanks is gradually raised to about 24 degrees Celsius and at the same time, the broodstock are given larger amounts of food, simulating natural spring conditions in the ocean. To initiate spawning, they are given a thermal shock of warmer water, and one male oyster is sacrificed and the gametes placed in the water. Once one oyster spawns, the rest follow suit.
About four million microscopic embryos are placed in large blue circular tanks where two times a day, hatchery manager Lord feeds them algae raised on-site. Throughout the growth process, she monitors the algae count present in each tank’s water to determine the volume and type of algae that needs to be added.
As the larvae grow, Lord decreases their density by draining the tank through a fine mesh sieve and putting some of the larvae into other tanks. After 10 to 16 days, the larvae, which have metamorphosed into juveniles and now look like black sand, are transferred to rectangular tanks with screens covered by crushed oyster shells that simulats the substrate larvae would attach to in the wild. They are periodically run through sieves of various sizes so that those growing at similar rates can be placed in other tanks. This prevents the larger ones from hogging all the food from the smaller ones and allows Lord to adjust their diet.
Approximately eight weeks after the embryos were placed in the first set of tanks, the baby oysters reach two and one-half millimeters in size, the most popular shipping size. Without using a microscope, they are barely recognizable as oysters. “We don’t like to keep them any longer,” says Maloney. “They eat too much.”
The hatchery ships varied sizes, starting at one millimeter for oysters, which are so tiny, one million can be scooped up in two handfuls. They are wrapped in damp paper, put in a ziplock bag, placed in an insulated box with a gel pack and then packed in foam nuggets in a cardboard box. The next day, they are at the client’s grow-out facility.
Meanwhile, the next batch of broodstock has already been acclimated, their embryos placed in the circular blue tanks, and those larvae are ready to occupy the now-empty rectangular tanks with the substrate-covered screens. “Timing is everything,” says Maloney. “It’s important in every phase of the process.”
Lord oversees algae production, a critical and fascinating part of running a successful hatchery. Different species of algae are grown by the “batch culture” process in a warm, humid, brightly lit room monitored by “Hal” on the hatchery’s third floor. The technology used at Muscongus, Maloney explains, was perfected about 30 years ago by researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and Bigelow Lab. It is much like making yogurt.
In the first stage, different species of algae are placed in media in 250-milliliter beakers, where they divide until Lord determines they have reached the optimal density. Then, the contents of the small beakers are transferred to larger beakers. The algae multiply again, and when the optimal density is reached, it is ready to be added to pasteurized sea water in one of 100 85-liter tanks in another room. After seven to ten days, it will have multiplied again to the optimal density for feeding the baby shellfish. When the hatchery is in full production, the shellfish consume 10 to 12 tanks of algae a day. “Producing algae is very labor intensive,” says Maloney. “It takes 35 to 40 percent of the company’s total time, labor and space.” Although an available paste algae would be less labor intensive, he and Simmons believe the live cultures provide the best food.
In some hatcheries, he adds, all of the algae tanks are linked together. “If anything goes wrong in one tank, they have to start from scratch. If we have a problem, we can get rid of the contents of one tank and start it over again.”
Permits from multiple agencies allow Muscongus to pump water for all of these processes from Broad Cove on Muscongus Bay. Because the bay is so clean, they filter the water only through five-micrometer filter bags. “When I worked at Woods Hole we needed elaborate filters for water taken from Vineyard Sound,” Maloney says. The slightest bit of contamination, he explains, can ruin an entire crop. Water passes through a heat exchanger before being piped into the different tanks, where it is circulated by up- or down-wellers. The tanks are drained and re-filled every two days. No chemicals are added to the water at any time.
To further ensure their business’s viability, Maloney and Simmons have diversified their product and markets rather than depending on one particular species and area. They begin acclimating broodstock in January to raise oysters and quahogs for Northeast growers, bay scallops for one client in Massachusetts (these are raised in special outdoor tanks) and sometimes, an early batch of quahogs for Florida growers. Late in the summer, they produce more quahogs to send to Florida. In addition, they raise juvenile oysters for another facet of their business, growing out oysters at a lease site on the Damariscotta River, a process that takes about three years from juvenile to mature, marketable oyster.
Muscongus Aquaculture’s customer base has increased, and there are many repeat orders, says Maloney, but he and Simmons do not plan to expand or begin producing seed year-round. Rather, they use their off-time for maintenance and improvements to their procedures and facility, always with the aim of continuing to supply healthy seed precisely when growers need it.