Less Tension Needed to Expand R.I. Aquaculture

By BARRY A. COSTA-PIERCE/special to ecoRI News

Tiverton resident and aquaculturist Chris Clarendon runs what he calls the ‘smallest farm in the state.’ (ecoRI News file photo)As in many other crowded coastal areas, user conflicts over the use of Rhode Island’s coastal lagoons — salt ponds — for shellfish aquaculture have typically concerned two issues.

The first is that when a shellfish farmer receives a lease from the state for acreage on the pond bottom, that area is no longer available for use by wild shellfish harvesters, though it can be fished by recreational fishermen using the water column. The second is that the leased area is perceived to be off limits to other uses, such as boating or diving.

However, a number of recent developments, including both technological advances as well as an improved understanding of shellfish aquaculture, are converging to help solve these conflicts.

For instance, shellfish growers have developed new submerged gear — such as racks and bags for off-bottom submerged farming of oysters and upwellers for nursery stages of shellfish placed under floating docks. This makes their operations less obtrusive in the water, and makes it easier for other users to traverse the area.

Scientific findings are showing that shellfish aquaculture, when well managed, can provide solid environmental benefits, such as improving water quality by filtering nutrients and particles from the water and providing habitat for fish and other marine life. Also, as more wild harvesters are diversifying by turning to aquaculture for some part of their livelihoods, traditional animosities between shellfishermen and shellfish growers are receding.

To further improve relations between local communities and aquaculture operators, the Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) has long convened a working group on aquaculture regulations that has recently looked at the “social carrying capacity” for aquaculture in comparison with the ecological carrying capacity — meaning that the shellfish production in a area can be limited not only by concerns over its impacts on the ecosystem, but also by societal factors, its social acceptability.

Rhode Island is poised for major expansion in its shellfish aquaculture industry. Resolving user conflicts is key to managing this growth in a way that benefits the economy, the environment and the communities around the Ocean State’s salt ponds.

Barry A. Costa-Pierce is the Rhode Island Sea Grant director and professor of Fisheries and Aquaculture at the University of Rhode Island. The story appears in 41°N, a publication of Rhode Island Sea Grant and the Coastal Institute at the University of Rhode Island.

R.I. Shellfish Aquaculture Poised for Growth

By BARRY A. COSTA-PIERCE/special to ecoRI News

Experimental mussel culture in Narragansett Bay is showing great promise. Here is a seed collection rope where young mussels settle onto vertical lines in the water. (Photo courtesy of Rhode Island Sea Grant)Rhode Island could see significant growth in its shellfish aquaculture industry at a time when demand is on the rise.

U.S. consumption of mussels is skyrocketing. Americans import about 42 million pounds a year, more than 10 times what we produce. Canada’s Prince Edward Island exports most of its mussels to the United States, employing about 130 mussel farmers who farm about 11,000 acres and produce some 37 million pounds a year.

However, mussel farming in Rhode Island and southern New England could readily compete with that of Prince Edward Island, especially in terms of quality. Local waters are rich in the plankton and particles in the water — called detritus — that feed mussels and other shellfish. Our waters also are warmer, so that mussels growing here take just 10 to 12 months from seed to market, a process that takes twice as long in Canadian waters.

Bill Silkes is president and owner of American Mussel Harvesters, a shellfish processing and marketing company in North Kingstown, and owner of Salt Water Farms in the East Passage of Narragansett Bay off Aquidneck Island. Silkes is involved in a Sea Grant National Strategic Investment grant to expand mussel farming offshore. Silkes is working with a team of Rhode Island and Massachusetts fishermen, scientists and staff from the University of Rhode Island, the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole and the Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) on a mussel-farming project in the waters off Newport, Block Island and Massachusetts.

He said farming mussels in southern New England has the most immediate return on investment in terms of economic development for creating significant employment and economic opportunities. Silkes added that cultivation of seaweeds for “sea vegetables” is also an area of potential growth.

“We have a number of chefs that say they are interested, and we have sent out 30 pounds of samples for feedback,” he said.

Research also shows that oyster cultivation could be increased substantially in Rhode Island. Former URI graduate student Carrie Byron found that the biomass of cultured oysters could be increased 625 times current levels for Narragansett Bay and 62 times in Rhode Island’s coastal lagoons — or salt ponds — before the ecology of these ecosystems would be affected.

For Narragansett Bay, such an expansion would translate to about 218 million pounds of farmed oysters annually — an amount that is about four times the total estimated annual harvest of fish in the bay. Byron’s “socio-ecological carrying capacity” approach to aquaculture takes into consideration not only these figures and rigorous ecological modeling, but also a stakeholder process.

With the efforts of promising scientists, innovative business owners/farmers and others, Rhode Island has a great deal of opportunity for growth in sustainable aquaculture.

Barry A. Costa-Pierce is the Rhode Island Sea Grant director and professor of Fisheries and Aquaculture at the University of Rhode Island. The story appears in 41°N, a publication of Rhode Island Sea Grant and the Coastal Institute at the University of Rhode Island.

Oyster Farming is No Easy Living

By FRANK CARINI/ecoRI News staff

Tiverton resident and aquaculturist Chris Clarendon schleps an oyster cage from his boat to his pickup parked along Fogland Beach. (Frank Carini/ecoRI News staff photos)SAKONNET RIVER — Chris Clarendon runs what he calls the “smallest farm in the state” — about two dozen oysters cages suspended from a pier on the Portsmouth side of the river.

Several times a week, depending on the weather and the season, the 52-year-old Tiverton resident leaves Fogland Beach in his slightly-larger-than-a-dinghy boat and motors to the Glen Manor House pier to check on his aquaculture farm and to harvest oysters he will sell at a local farmers’ market a few hours later.

Clarendon started Seapowet Shellfish LLC. in 2004. Since then, he considers breaking even financially a good year. The reasons the Rhode Island aquaculture business, especially for small operations, is such a tricky investment are many, but Clarendon considers government the biggest obstacle.

“The state seems to make it as hard as possible,” he said. “The regulation process is long and cumbersome [it took 18 months to get all his permitting completed], and it seems like they sit on applications. Bureaucracy is the biggest impediment to me making a living.”

To illustrate his point, Clarendon noted the application he submitted to the Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) last summer regarding a 90-square-foot or so test lease for an out-of-the-way section in the Sakonnet River, near Fogland Beach. Windsurfers — many from out of state — quickly protested, and, two years later, Clarendon still hasn’t received a decision from the CRMC.

Clarendon wants to place a handful of 2-feet-by-2-feet oyster bags, marked with buoys, on the sandy bottom to see if that spot in the Sakonnet River would make a good place to move his small aquaculture operation. If so, he would no longer need a boat to get to his leased farm across the river — saving him money on gas, eliminating his $300-a-year mooring fee and lessening the carbon footprint on the river — and it would make harvesting his oysters less challenging.

He claimed this test operation wouldn’t interfere with any recreational activities. Earlier this summer on a perfect weekend beach day, ecoRI News accompanied Clarendon on a harvesting. There were at least 30 boats that Sunday playing in the water off Fogland Beach. The harbormaster was on patrol, and several windsurfers were gliding back and forth. Nobody came close to approaching the spot Clarendon would like to test for its oyster-farming abilities.

Chris Clarendon removes some recently harvested oysters from a sack while on his boat on the Sakonnet River.Starting an aquaculture business in Rhode Island, however, doesn’t just take time. It also takes a toll on one's bank account, especially when you are a one-person operation. Clarendon paid $250 just to file an application with the CRMC. The various licenses he must renew annually total about $650, and that cost can jump year to year, depending on the state’s financial health.

“A few years ago, the Department of Health more than doubled its license fee from one season to the next,” Clarendon said. “There’s no warning at all. It seems like all these decisions are made behind closed doors.”

Besides the plethora of government fees, insurance also takes a financial bite. Clarendon’s product liability insurance, which he is required to have in order to sell his oysters at farmers’ markets, costs $800 annually.

Rising fuel prices also haven’t helped his bottom line.

To break even financially in a given year Clarendon needs to sell between 10,000 and 12,000 oysters. He charges farmers’ market patrons a dollar an oyster, and restaurants seldom pay more than 70 cents for one.

Red tape, however, isn’t the only challenge faced by small-time aquaculturists.

“It’s hard to raise oysters because everything wants to eat them,” said Clarendon, a Miami native who graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design two decades ago and decided to make the Ocean State his home.

Besides predators, there’s also disease and pests. The boring sponge, for example, is the top underwater nemesis of an oyster farmer. It gets it name because this mollusk bores holes into an oyster’s shell — weakening the shell, sometimes killing the oyster and destroying the product for the raw-bar market.

Boring sponges hit Clarendon’s oyster farm hard three years ago. He’s still recovering from that loss, because it takes at least 18 months in the water before oysters are ready to bring to market. “Some are in the water for three years,” said Clarendon, who is married with two children.

And since Rhode Island doesn’t have a commercial hatchery, most of the Ocean State’s 33 shellfish farmers must buy their needed spat from out of state. Roger Williams University has a hatchery, but those oysters are for study and restoration — not retail.

Clarendon has bought oyster seed from operations in Maine, New York and Maryland and from one on Martha’s Vineyard that has since gone out of business. In the past several years, the cost for 6-millimeter seed — the size Clarendon typically buys — has doubled, from $15 per 1,000 to $30.

To keep more of the aquaculture industry in Rhode Island, Clarendon is lobbying for in-state, fee-for-service hatchery that could be built with state grant money. “It would really help us little aquaculture guys,” he said. “It’s a simple idea. You’d bring your own stock from mature oysters and the hatchery would grow it for you, for a fee, until it was ready to be put in cages. It could be a moneymaker if it is run properly. We’d be developing local stock that is adapted to the local environment and the local waters.”

Clarendon’s proposal has received little traction, and his frustration grows.

When asked why he still keeps at this tough-to-make-a-living business, the onetime cubicle-encased graphic designer responded, “The view from my office window is very nice.”

Movement in Jamestown for Aquaculture Center

By FRANK CARINI/ecoRI News staff

JAMESTOWN — Phil Larson spent two decades as a chef at a waterfront Newport restaurant known for its fine seafood, and a chief source of frustration for him was the consistent inability to serve customers quality oysters from local waters.

Since his retirement from the commercial kitchen a decade ago, Larson’s frustration with the Ocean State’s oyster harvest hasn’t waned. To address his concerns about the quality and quantity of Rhode Island oysters, Larson has been on a mission to turn the abandoned World War II mine storage building at Fort Wetherill into an aquaculture center.

“We generally couldn’t get good oysters from Narragansett Bay,” said the 58-year-old Larson, who worked at The Mooring Seafood Kitchen & Bar from 1980 to 2000. “The Fort Wetherill site would be a great place for aquaculture purposes. It would be a great site for depuration.”

Depuration — or purification — is a process by which shellfish are held in tanks of clean seawater under conditions that maximize their natural filtering abilities. A mature oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water a day. This natural filtration clears the water and allows for more sun penetration and, thus, more marine plant growth and the habitat it creates.

This process results in the expulsion of the oysters’ intestinal contents and enhances separation of expelled contaminants. Bivalve mollusks, such as oysters and mussels, concentrate contaminants from the water column in which they grow. These contaminants may then cause illness to humans when the shellfish are eaten. For microbial contaminants, the risk is enhanced by the fact that these shellfish are often eaten raw or relatively lightly cooked.

Limiting the risk of illness depends partly on sourcing the shellfish from areas in which such contaminants are at relatively low levels.

Depuration was developed to address the problem of a large number of shellfish-associated outbreaks of typhoid — caused by the bacterium salmonella typhi — that caused illness and death at the end of the 19^th century and beginning of the 20^th century.

The Jamestown Aquaculture Movement (JAM) was established in 2008 to create a broad-based educated mindset that is supportive of sustainable aquaculture businesses in the Ocean State, according to Larson.

The JAM initiative includes the possibility of a research component in association with Roger Williams University, the University of Rhode Island and the state Department of Environmental Management; a trade school offering an accredited associate’s degree in marine hatchery management; a commercial cooperative shellfish nursery and a purification, marketing and testing facility at Fort Wetherill; and development of the adjacent cove for edible seaweed production.

Such a project, said Larson, who is chairman of the movement, would create local jobs by promoting and assisting the procurement of local aquaculture, leased growing beds and a supply station for the necessary equipment.

JAM members, there are about 500, said money could be obtained through grants and fundraising, and the town of Jamestown would maintain ownership of the building. JAM’s plans don’t interfere with the Fort Wetherill Boat Owners Association, and traffic, parking and noise would be minimal, according to members.

JAM is actively looking for an organization that might want to lease that building from the town for an aquaculture purpose. Also, wind, tide and solar power would be explored as viable energy sources for the facility, members said.

“In this economic climate we can choose to complain or we start to fix things locally,” said Larson, a Cape Cod native who has spent plenty of time digging for shellfish, spearfishing and lobstering. “The Fort Wetherill site would be perfect for a nursery but not for a hatchery because the water is too clean. There’s not enough algae.”

 There are about 200 aquaculture farmers in Massachusetts, but only 33 in Rhode Island. JAM members believe there is a substantial amount of aquaculture growth to be realized in the Ocean State, including a hatchery for oyster, clam and scallop spat.

Rhode Island doesn’t have a commercial hatchery. Rhode Island shellfish growers must buy their needed spat from out of state — typically from nurseries in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Maine. Roger Williams University has a hatchery, but those oysters are for study and restoration — not retail.

Of course, the approval process for the JAM initiative would be tedious. In fact, Larson, who has a degree in zoology from the University of Maine, started JAM because there is so much confusion in the state regarding the aquaculture industry. Not only are the Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) and state Department of Environmental Management  (DEM) involved, but so are the state Department of Health (DOH) and the National Shellfish Sanitation Conference.

“Oysters can be grown for consumption and for restoration,” Larson said. “Nobody wants anybody getting sick from eating shellfish, but the overall advantages of this industry can surpass those concerns. We want to educate the public so we can become a political force in this state. The movement is already here. People want to become closer to their food source, like we have done with agriculture.”

The oyster industry was once a much bigger part of Rhode Island’s economy. The amount of submerged lands leased for aquaculture peaked in 1911 at about 21,000 acres — roughly 20 percent of the entire bottom of Narragansett Bay, according to Michael Rice, a professor of aquaculture at URI.

That year, the local aquaculture industry produced 1.4 million bushels of oysters valued at $135 million in 2006 dollars, according to Rice’s report entitled “A History of Oyster Aquaculture in Rhode Island.”

According to the CRMC’s latest report completed in 2009, Rhode Island’s 33 oyster farms, most of which are in coastal ponds, were leasing 134 acres and had a market value of $1.7 million.

A number of factors of played a role in diminishing the Ocean State’s oyster harvest, including pollution from textile mills, a buildup of silt and lack of oxygen in the water, declining interest in the business and the Great Hurricane of 1938, which destroyed much of the industry’s infrastructure and oyster beds.

JAM is now hoping to help return oyster harvesting to its heyday.