Rising Tides: Two Scallop Farms, Two Bets — with Dana Morse

Two Maine scallop farms are betting on two different futures: one building a premium shucked-meat business, the other building a market for whole, live scallops — a market that depends on testing infrastructure more fragile than it looks.

In this episode of Rising Tides, Bill Perna talks with Dana Morse, whose work on Maine's scallop farming industry stretches back to early research trips to Japan and years of applied science that helped develop the growing techniques behind both these businesses. His story is part history, part economics, and part open question about what comes next for the people growing Maine's newest crop.

Perna Content's Rising Tides explores how coastal Maine is adapting to environmental, economic, and cultural change through long-form conversations with people working on and alongside the water. New episodes are released fortnightly.

The podcast accompanies the book Rising Tides: Adapting to Maine’s Coastal Future, available at www.pernacontent.com/publishing

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 1:03

It's got a wealth of insight and a skill of everything. What's working, what's next, and why it all matters.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Hi, Bill.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Hey, Dana, how are you?

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Good today, thanks. How are you? Good. Yeah, now kind of back in the swing.

SPEAKER_02 1:19

Yeah. So I think it would be helpful if I just sort of turn it over to you and you tell the story as if you were speaking to someone, because you are speaking to someone who doesn't know a whole heck of a lot about what is the state of events and the future possibilities of the events.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

Well, it's easy to start talking, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:41

Sure, then all right. Then I will get out of the way and let you go.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

Yeah. Sculpt story for me, and since I've been at this for a while, it it kind of mirrors what's happening or what has happened in the state. In 1999, there was a delegation that went to Japan, and the focus of that group was to learn about how they did fat collection. And the focus was really on enhancement of the wild resource as opposed to farming per se. And I got to tag along because a bunch of other people, I was still very new at the time, uh, a bunch of other people who had been asked prior couldn't make it. And so I I was kind of down the list there, but I was free and I was interested. So I tagged along on that trip, and it was great for networking, and it was great for learning about what they were doing. And so once the group came back, that information got transferred in a bunch of different ways to different communities around the coast. And after, from say 1999 through 2004 or so, there was some pretty active work up and down the coast to try to learn about how to catch our sea scallops and then what to do with them. Can we put them back down on the bottom and can we uh let them grow and then fish on them a couple years later? And the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance, uh NAMA, which is was down in Sacco, played a big role there. And perhaps the biggest role was played by Marsden Brewer, um who got had the first special license in the state to set spat collectors. And he worked with a bunch of fishermen in those years, and it took them, in my view, it took them precisely two seasons to get pretty good at catching scallop spat. So they did their fisherman thing and they figured it out, and there were some efforts at reseeding bottom using the scallops that came out from those bags, but they were pretty small and they swim around and they get eaten a lot. And so what happened was there was no firm documentation that we were really enhancing the scallops stock. And probably between, I don't know, 02 and 03, 05 or so, the spat collection dropped off a lot because the fishermen who were participating said, I'm spending time and money doing this, but I can't be guaranteed, or there isn't a clear pathway for me to fish on these later on. SPAC collection dropped a lot between say 05 and oh probably 2009, 2010 or so. And then starting in 2010 and particularly 2011, there was a little blush of research to examine grow out techniques. So now we're not really talking about stock enhancement. Now the focus shifted a little bit more towards farming, like intensive farming to grow it all the way to harvest. And in the meantime, in 2010, Hugh Copperthwaite and Chris Davis and a few other people participated in a different delegation to Japan. And they came back armed with taking a look at ear hanging as a technique, and I think some more information about lantern nets and pearl net production. And so the work that I had been doing using like bottom cages to grow scallops then met up with the information that Hugh Copperthwaite had and his perspective of an economic development person. And so his interest was how can we try ear hanging as a production technique so that we could farm scallops and how can we advance with pearl nets and lanternets? And so we started talking and working together a little bit. He had begun a relationship with a gentleman last name of Tsugiyama, who passed away, I think, 2016 or 2018 or so. But Mr. Sugiyama had started a company that made ear hanging equipment, and he was very kindly predisposed to main and to main fishermen and trying to get people here enthusiastic about it. Hugh really led that relationship and brought Sugiyama here a couple times and his colleagues and kids, and eventually purchased the first ear hanging equipment in the United States. And so he had some money to work with fishermen to try out this technique. And in the meantime, he also led a trip 2016 to bring a group of fishermen back to Japan. I tagged along on this one, and so the group came back in 2016, all fired up because we had met with Mr. Sugiyama and we had visited with some fishermen and been out on some boats, and people were really enthusiastic, having seen what was going on in Japan. And so that was a really pivotal trip. I had in 2017 secured some funding from Salton Stall Kennedy to start taking a look at husbandry practices and growth rates and survival and that kind of stuff using this new gear. And Hugh was part of that project. And so we started to do some applied science together with fishermen, a few growers around the coast, including Andrew Peters and Mariston Brewer, Nate Perry. We did a little bit with Peter Stocks, we did a little bit with the Pemicode Oyster Company. And so now we're starting to collect growth data and density information, comparing lantern nets and pearl nets and ear hanging. And the graduate student on the project, a fellow named Struan Coleman, put together a bioeconomic model that combined the biological information that we got with the economics about how much yield you get and what's your revenue and what are your capital expenses and what are your labor expenses. So now that we had some hard experimental data, he was able to match that with information directly from the growers to try to figure out things like profitability and what scale should you be at. And there has been more work along those lines since. I should also say that going back to about 2016, I had had some money first through the Maine Aquaculture Innovation Center and then through the Stalton Stall Kennedy program and also the Northeast SAIR program, I think, too, where we started collecting biotoxin information on scallops from a few different sites. And we worked closely with the Maine Department of Marine Resources on how to structure this. And Maine DMR, for their part, they put together a protocol for how to test, like how many animals and how to handle them in the paper trail that needs to accompany them. And then they also put together a protocol for growers that dictated how frequently they would have to sample if they wanted to sell a whole or alive scallop. We have now, oh boy, this is getting on seven years worth of biotoxin data, which is really important if we're going to demonstrate that we can sell whole product safely. And we have two pretty good going concerns for scallop farms, Vertical Bay and Pen Bay Farm scallops, and then we have a little constellation of growers who might have several thousand to maybe tens of thousands of scallops on their farms, and they are sort of the next crop of growers coming up, if you will.

SPEAKER_02 9:19

Can I just ask, what is the methodology? Is it the lanterns or the ear technique?

SPEAKER_01 9:24

Which is mostly lantern nets and pearl nets.

SPEAKER_02 9:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 9:28

Even though they're a little bit hard to come by, they're pretty cheap and relatively easy to manage, whereas the ear hanging takes a lot more capital to get up and running.

SPEAKER_02 9:39

Due to the work involved?

SPEAKER_01 9:41

Due to the work involved, but also the machinery involved. Say you can get a good drill for $18,000, or you can get a really good drill for $50,000. And then there's a cleaner that will run you probably another $20,000 to $30,000 once all is said and done. There's some pretty specialized equipment involved in there, and it's easier to jump in using lanterns and pearls. Okay. So that was a lot. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 10:08

So how is the market for the scallops at this point in time? And is the direction expanding? More people getting on board. And are people specifically saying that's what I do? Or is it in addition to like wasn't Bang Island doing scallops as well?

SPEAKER_01 10:25

They were. And then they decided that mussels and then seaweed, seaweed being the secondary crop, if you will, that was the direction they wanted to go.

SPEAKER_02 10:34

Got it. What's the trend going on now for scallops? Is it trending in a good direction?

SPEAKER_01 10:40

Yes. And generally it is trending towards growth. But as with anything, it gets a little complicated. One of the really interesting things about this is that Vertical Bay and Penn Bay Farm Scallops are pursuing two different business models. And I I think that's really good. And it sheds light on each approach. Vertical Bay is using lanternets and pearl nets and ear hanging, and they're pursuing mainly the shucked meats market. Right. And the market for shucked meats in the United States is enormous, especially for quality meats like you get from a day boat fisherman or off the farm. I don't think anybody knows how big that market is, but prices off the farm are anywhere, I'm going to guess, between $30 and $40. And there are people who are willing to pay that. And Andrew Peters at Vertical Bay is planning on growing. So his production will go up. And this is his sole income. His his wife does have a job, but he is a scallop farmer, and that's what he does. That's his whole thing. And and when did he start? Oh boy, about 2017, 2018 or so.

SPEAKER_02 11:54

Oh, so that quickly he's been able to turn it into a job that could keep it moving.

SPEAKER_01 12:00

Yes. And I suspect that he has some investment in there, but I don't know all the all the details about it.

SPEAKER_02 12:07

And how about Marsden? I know you and he work together on projects, right?

SPEAKER_01 12:12

Yes. And Marsden and his son Bob, this is pretty much all they do as well, although they do a little bit of scalloping. Marsden gave up lobstering a couple of years ago, which is a big step. And so they use lantern nets almost exclusively, I think. And their market is principally the whole and the live market. So they've sold to Island Creek, they've sold to Sopo Seafood, they've sold, oh, like to Harbor Fish and a bunch of other places, and a bunch of restaurants as well. So you can buy as small a scallop as a two-inch shell, all the way up to a four-inch plus scallop from them. And prices are good. And they could, I think, definitely grow, but they're this is where the sticky point is. This is where the complication comes in. And it is around biotoxin testing.

SPEAKER_02 13:09

That's what I wanted to ask you about because you touched on it in our last call about the expense.

SPEAKER_01 13:16

So right now they would love to grow, but at the moment the testing costs are subsidized by Bigelow Laboratory. And if that subsidy goes away, and if they need to pay full freight on their biotoxin tests, their company would probably fold.

SPEAKER_02 13:33

Wow, so it's really on a knife's edge then.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

I would say yes. And I don't know if they would switch models and try to go towards the shucked meat model, but they've really done a ton of really good work to get chefs and others accustomed to what to do with the whole scallop. And their product gets a very good reception. And they sell everything they can grow.

SPEAKER_02 13:56

Do you know who some of the restaurants are that he sells to?

SPEAKER_01 14:01

Well, the one that I know most uh about is Aragosta up there in Deer Isle.

SPEAKER_02 14:07

Okay. Good story. Good story. It really is. I mean, for me, it's just fascinating speaking to people who not only do they come up with these ideas, but they figure out how to execute them and work through all of the logistics and they're problems. You're all problem solvers. It's really fascinating to listen to. All right, Dana, thank you again.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

My pleasure. It's always good to talk. And thanks. Thanks for your time. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

If you're enjoying these stories, visit pronocontent.com or MaineOysterbook.com, where you can pre-order our new book, Rising Tides, Adapting to Coastal Main's Future. And while you're there, you can grab a copy of Main Oyster. Stories of Resistance Coast, Coastal Coast, Coast, and the Fox.