Ken Beebe, of Harpswell, would like to trade his day job painting houses for raising oysters. “All my life I’ve been painting houses,” he says. “I want to get away from the fumes, be in the fresh air working on the water.” He hopes a new oyster farming technology, OysterGro, which has been used successfully in Canada for several years, will help him achieve this dream.
Each OysterGro unit is 18 inches wide, 35 inches long and three inches high. A wire cage that holds six mesh oyster bags is attached to two pontoon floats. Rheal Savoie, of Bouctouche Bay Industries, Inc. of New Brunswick says one OysterGro unit, starting with 1,000 seed per bag in the first year, sorted to 500 the second year and to 250 the third, can produce 1,500 mature oysters in five years with a mortality rate of one to two percent, compared to 15 to 20 percent in other growing methods.
Beebe, the first to use OysterGro in Maine, is new to aquaculture. Just over a year ago, he started to think about raising oysters, which are so popular growers cannot keep up with the demand, and he sought information from Dana Morse of the Maine Sea Grant program. Morse, and Chris Davis of Pemaquid Oyster, have organized and run the oyster gardening program on the Damariscotta River in conjunction with the Damariscotta River Association. “Dana helped me a lot,” Beebe says. “I knew zero.”
In November, he filled the mesh bags of two OysterGro units with oysters he had been raising last summer, put them into the cage and removed the caps at the end of each pontoon on the unit, allowing them to fill with water. The whole thing sank to the bottom to overwinter at his lease site, with the pontoons keeping the oysters off the bottom. In April, he pulled the units, emptied water from the pontoons and floated the rafts again. And in May, when he opened the bags to sort the oysters, he was pleased with their look: good cupping with plenty of meat inside.
Beebe’s lease sites are of particular interest to other growers in the state because they are in pure ocean water, not brackish. Two are next to the location of an old tidal mill dam. The mill is gone, but the racing waters remain, providing a rich exchange of nutrients for his oysters. Although the bulk of his seed will be American oyster (Crassostrea virginica) commonly grown in Maine, he will experiment also with European oysters (Ostrea edulis), which Morse says have been difficult to raise in Maine although there are places where they thrive in the wild.
For optimum feeding, the bags holding oyster seed have to be cleaned periodically to remove secondary spat, competitors and predators. OysterGro designers believe their system makes this chore easier because all six bags can be flipped into sun and air at once when the owner flips the entire cage, putting the plastic floats on the bottom. Beebe says he has turned his bags more often than the recommended three to five times a season, but that he leaves them turned for only a fraction of the suggested 24 to 38 hours.
Jesse Leach, whose leases are further Downeast, has been growing oysters commercially for over 10 years. He’s enthusiastic about giving an OysterGro unit a try, hopes it will reduce labor and handling involved in overwintering. His process has been to take the oysters out of the mesh bags and put them down in containers he built which stand about eight to 10 inches off the bottom. He’ll experiment with two different lease sites in the Bagaduce River that have markedly different tide changes.
Ed Perry, who learned about raising oysters in the Oyster Gardening program, thinks the OysterGro system may make it easier for him to raise them on his own at his waterfront property in Edgecomb. A retired engineer, Perry raises oysters recreationally, just enough for himself and family. “I’m over 80 years old,” he says. “I want to enjoy life.” He plans to put the unit on the inside of his float.
Jeff McKeen, of Pemaquid Oyster Company, questions if the oysters would mature in OysterGro units as rapidly as in Pemaquid’s present system, where they grow out loose on the bottom and can reach maturity in two to three years. Pemaquid’s system, he notes, also creates less visible gear in the water, because only the smallest oysters float in bags on the surface. McKeen is not sure that oysters from an OysterGro unit would have the desired cup that makes possible a large amount of meat, how the oysters would fare when the unit rests on a soft river bottom like his company has for much of its lease sites and if “biofouling” (the unwelcome accumulation of organisms on underwater structures) would be more significant here than on the north coast of New Brunswick. And, he adds, there would be the expense of changing gear.
But, despite his concerns, McKeen says he will probably try OysterGro because he so respects the expertise of Maurice Daigle, a farmer who uses the system large scale in New Brunswick.
Morse, who works closely with both commercial and recreational growers, thinks the OysterGro will be appealing for residents who own waterfront property, but he stresses that people must learn about and follow strict rules for biosecurity. “Disease is a huge issue,” he says. “If people are going to put any gear into the water they have to spend time with the state and other resource people to understand not just the benefits, but also the risks.”
Brooks Trap Mill in Thomaston is selling OysterGro; Mark Brooks says quite a few people have expressed interest, both commercial and recreational growers. The units sell for $125 with additional charges for mesh bags and mooring equipment.