The oldest commercial shellfish hatchery on the East Coast is under new ownership as of this past summer.
Aquacultural Research Corporation in Dennis sells more than one hundred million seed shellfish each year.
That's according to Tyler Jager of the Provincetown Independent. CAI's Gilda Geist spoke to Tyler to learn more.
Gilda Geist Seed shellfish—can we think of them as baby shellfish, or is that not really an accurate way to capture what these little guys are?
Tyler Jager It's definitely one of the stages of being a baby shellfish, is the seed. So, what makes Aquaculture Research Corporation really special is as a hatchery, it spawns oysters and grows them in that early stage of the reproductive cycle. And when they go from there, there's a stage where they're sort of swimming in the water as a fertilized egg, and then eventually develop a shell when they set on a hard microscopic surface. So that's what is called seed at Aquaculture Research Corporation, and because those seeds can be so small and hard to maintain on your own, that's why that's what they sell to oyster farmers. And then they just get bigger and bigger after that until they look like an oyster.
GG Did you get a sense of how many of ARC's customers are shellfish growers on Cape Cod versus elsewhere? How much of a role does this company seem to play in the local economy?
TJ Yeah, I mean, I think it's a major role. I've heard estimates from between two-thirds to 75 percent of the seed that's sold on Cape Cod is from ARC. They certainly do have some larger customers that they have a longstanding arrangement with elsewhere. So, there's a Florida customer that I think they grow quahogs for here in the winter. But it's a major player in the local shellfishing economy. It's also just a very established supplier. For a long time, it was the only hatchery on Cape Cod for oysters, for commercial shellfish. And more recently, there have been a few other hatcheries, but even for some nurseries that sell just seed but don't hatch it, they're selling seed that comes from ARC.
GG What is the most interesting thing you learned about how spawning and growing seed shellfish works?
TJ One of the most interesting things is how ARC uses sort of selective breeding to cross parents and strains of oysters. I mean, one thing you hear about in the Outer Cape is the distinction between wild and farmed oysters, especially in a town like Wellfleet, which has the only wild commercial oyster fishery in the state. But those distinctions really blend, especially at a place like ARC where some of the hatched oysters are in fact the offspring of like, one parent that's coming from a wild oyster that a customer brought them in Wellfleet and crossed with another kind of oyster. And they really focus on oysters that have survived diseases like dermo disease and MSX. And then do what they can to sort of propagate their lineage, because those are diseases, the survival of which is genetically linked in oysters. So, they keep sort of the whole genetic pool available to oyster populations healthy, in a way, by having that bank of seeds.
GG What about running this kind of business is most challenging for ARC and its employees?
TJ I think a big challenge is actually just space. These are shellfish that grow pretty quickly, and we're talking about millions, right? So just a small change in their size can mean a really big change in how much space you need. And at a certain stage, they can sort of get fed through a water source that's algae-rich. But before that, their greatest storage constraint is actually growing the algae themselves. So, I learned that to address that, more recently they've expanded how much they rely on these robotic systems that can just automatically grow algae. They're called photobioreactors. And you sort of set the parameters for a batch of algae. I watched Lisa Bourassa, who's their algae research manager, do it, and you sort just order up what you want the pH to be and what the lighting to be for the photosynthesis that's happening there and just watch them grow. And I think that it's an interesting example of sort of a creative use of technology to address these challenges.
