Episode 17: Deep Ocean Oyster Farming on Martha's Vineyard with Dan Martino, Cottage City Oysters

Show Notes

Deep Ocean Oyster Farming on Martha's Vineyard with Dan Martino, Cottage City Oysters

In this episode, the founder of Cottage City Oysters, Dan, shares his journey from a TV producer to a pioneering oyster farmer on Martha's Vineyard. He discusses the unique challenges and satisfactions of oyster and seaweed farming in deep waters, touching upon the differences with other coastal farming methods, the historical significance of the location, and the gradual scaling of his business. Dan emphasizes the importance of sustainability, merroir, and the role of proper husbandry techniques in oyster growth. He also highlights the regulatory hurdles faced by ocean farmers and the innovative approaches taken to market the farm’s organic certification and products. With anecdotes about unexpected educational tours and the community’s initial resistance based on misconceptions, Dan's story is a testament to innovation, adaptability, and passion in sustainable aquaculture.

00:00 Introduction to Oyster Farming

00:33 Meet the Oyster Farmer

02:42 The Journey to Oyster Farming

05:50 Challenges and Learning in Oyster Farming

07:56 Innovations in Oyster Farming Techniques

10:35 3D Farming and Its Benefits

15:10 Regulations and Market Strategies

24:16 Oyster Tours and Experiences

25:53 The Unique Appeal of Martha's Vineyard Oysters

26:18 Overcoming Initial Challenges and Community Resistance

27:20 The Birth of Oyster Farm Tours

28:06 Balancing Farming and Tour Operations

30:13 Organic Certification Journey

32:09 Water Quality and Environmental Impact

34:18 Challenges and Innovations in Oyster Farming

37:34 Exploring Seaweed Farming

40:50 Scaling the Business and Future Prospects

47:51 Conclusion and Future Outlook

Links:

Cottage City Oysters website (https://cottagecityoysters.com/)

Dan's Instagram Page: @oysterfarmerdan

Martino’s Seafood Online Store (https://cottagecityoysters.com/new-products)

The Oyster Book, by Dan Martino (Agate 2024) at Amazon.com

Please be sure to Like and Follow OYSTER-ology wherever you listen to podcasts, and tell others about it. Every positive mention of it helps more people find the podcast!

Transcript

TRNASCRIPT: Dan Martino, Cottage City Oysters

 [00:00:00]

[BUBBLES]

Dan Martino: The way that we all farm, there's nothing to hide. Like if you go to an industrial chicken farmer, he doesn't want to show you what he's doing. you're going to walk into that warehouse and there's going to be dead birds on the ground and a lot of things that they're going to have to explain, that they don't want the public to see where oyster farming is, the opposite where anybody could come onto an oyster farm on any given day and watch what we do and there's nothing to hide.that's how food should be. Right?

Kevin: Welcome to OYSTER-ology, a podcast about the wide world of oysters, aquaculture, and everything from spat to shuck. I'm your host and the Foodwalker, Kevin Cox. 

What happens when you take a couple of Texas boys with a harebrained idea to do something they know nothing about and drop them on a small island in the cold waters off the coast of Cape Cod? Well, if you're my guest, Dan Martino, Yes, start an oyster farm. Dan and his brother, [00:01:00] Greg started Martino Seafood and Cottage City Oysters on the pristine island of Martha's Vineyard. Originally involved in filmmaking, Dan was inspired by the magic of oysters when on an oyster shoot, he decided that he needed to quit his job and become an oyster farmer.

So he and his brother moved to the Vineyard, thinking it would be a pretty easy gig to get rich doing. They quickly discovered that their youthful ignorance was probably the only thing that enabled them to finally get a permit after three years of town refusals, complaints, learnings, lawsuits, and endless regulatory hurdles. And, after getting their permit, they discovered that it was not even the kind of salt pond growing area of the Vineyard that they had wanted, but rather offshore, deep in the ocean. But ignorance is bliss, and the Martino boys went ahead and figured out how to farm in those conditions, eventually coming up with a farm that produces deep ocean oysters that are plump and sensational and exclusive to Martha's Vineyard.

In my conversation with Dan, he tells the [00:02:00] story of creating the farm with no knowledge of oyster farming or even how to drive a boat. boat. He explains that eventually realizing how little they knew, they had to stop and listen to others who knew more than they did, and that's what led them to success.

Today, they farm oysters in a 3D water column from as deep as 25 feet up to the surface. Along with their great oysters, they farm some mussels, scallops, and sugar kelp, taking full advantage and efficient use of all of the water on their farm. Throw in farm tours and some oyster catering and the Martino brothers have built their farm into a shining example of alternative ways to grow shellfish in less than optimal conditions.

Equally important to Dan is his priority of sustainability and environmental stewardship of their farm. His commitment to the protection of the Vineyard waters and to finding ways to maximize output with an eye toward contributing to the planet's future food supply challenge is revealed in every [00:03:00] discussion and decision he makes.

Dan also takes us deep into research on oyster growing, aquaculture and new ways of doing what has been done the old fashioned way for generations. He sits on numerous advisory committees and associations focusing on sustainable aquaculture and ocean food production. For a Texas kid with no knowledge about oysters or farming, Dan has become a respected expert in both the practical and scientific sides of it.

He's even come out with a new book, The Oyster Book, which covers all aspects of oysters and farming from its earliest history to the present and often to the future. That book and Dan's journey in writing it will be the subject of a future OYSTER-ology episode in the next few weeks. But to understand it, you first need to hear about starting a farm with no knowledge, the importance of water quality, oyster predators, diving around oyster cages, 3D farming, getting a European Organic Certification, [00:04:00] the wonder of Martha's Vineyard Oysters, and more. The joy of regulatory obstacles and the uniqueness of deep ocean oyster farming with oyster, scallop, mussel and seaweed farmer, author, teacher, speaker and aquaculture science geek who just thinks of himself as Dan the Farmer, Dan Martino.

[BUBBLES]

Dan, welcome to OYSTER-ology. It is so great to have you here. I haven't been, to your farm on Martha's Vineyard yet, but you operate – is it Cottage City Oyster Company or just Cottage City Oysters?

Dan Martino: Well, now you opened up a can of worms. so it's actually Martino's Seafood is the company, Cottage City Oysters is the brand of oyster that we farm. And that's because Oak Bluffs used to be called the Cottage City, a very long time ago. And. historically oysters were always named after where they were from, where they were [00:05:00] harvested from and being the first Oak Bluffs farm, we decided we wanted to, pay homage to that homage and kind of, name it after the historical name of the town.

Kevin: That's very cool. I like the idea of getting back to the original roots, which is sort of what oysters are all about since they're kind of prehistoric creatures.

Dan Martino: Yeah, totally. And now it's. And it helps, right? Because if you eat an oyster called a Sally River Blonde or whatever, right, it has no, historical reference or geographical reference. And you kind of don't know what you're eating. So by, by having an oyster named after a location, It actually helps the consumer understand where that product's coming from.

Kevin: So do you produce just one oyster, called Cottage City or do you produce a variety of oysters like a lot of farms do?

Dan Martino: When we, yeah, when we first started, a decade ago, we were doing only the Cottage City oyster. since then we've now, [00:06:00] we've experimented with clams and seaweeds and blue mussels and bay scallops.

and we have a second oyster now that's technically in Vineyard Haven. So it's actually in a different town, different body of water. And we're, we haven't brought that to market yet, but we're trying to decide, do we keep it the Cottage City brand name or do we create a new, brand. And that's kind of a, I guess it'd be like, do you call every hamburger a quarter pounder with cheese or do you change the name a little bit to make a new product that sounds exciting for more, for people to go buy,

Kevin: So tell me a little bit about you and your background and how you got here.

Dan Martino: I, I was a TV producer for a really long time and I was out of college, started producing TV shows. And that's how I ended up moving to Martha's Vineyard. I was transferred. by a production company out to the island to do work out here. And, um, they went bankrupt. they had a pretty bad, [00:07:00] business model. And so I kind of started freelancing, doing TV work and did movies and, ended up being hired to film a show about seafood and where it came from. And part of that show was we went out, on these harpoon bluefin tuna boats. And we tried to harpoon some bluefin tuna and meet those guys and learn how all that worked.

And then the flip side of the industry was farming. And we went to New York to Governor's Island. There was a project called the Billion Oyster Project that was just starting. and it was so new that. They didn't even have oysters in the water yet. We went and met with Pete and, toured the grounds on Governor's Island and there was, it was all in shambles and nothing had been created yet and the New York Harbor School was actually running this pilot program and they had these little baby oysters that they had just put in the water.

[00:08:00] So when you're making a TV show and you're filming little baby oysters, there's not, it's not very exciting. It was kind of like anti climatic as can be. but Pete offered, for our TV crew to go to his father and parents farm, which is on Fisher Island. so that was Fisher Island Oysters. And we went there, did a farm tour with them, learned how oysters were made, met the team that was making those oysters. I got to eat them. Eat the oyster right out of the water. I got to see how baby oysters were made. and it just blew my mind. Like they, and the Malinowskis are some of the most, Fisher Island oysters, those are some of the most cutting edge when it comes to environmental sustainability.

And they sit on all the boards for pushing aquaculture, oyster aquaculture, to be sustainable and to kind of praise. Those aspects of the industry and so all of that like really resonated and um I came home and decided that night. I wanted to be an [00:09:00] oyster farmer

Kevin: No kidding

Dan Martino: And then it was like, I didn't have a boat. I didn't I'd never even driven a boat. It was one of those things of like you see it you're like, oh I could do that and then I really like, Well shit, maybe I'm gonna I'm gonna actually try to do this And and then my brother and I my brother was living on the island He came up on vacation, and he's kind of been on vacation since and, him and I kind of teamed up on this and said, Let's give it a go. And that kind of opened that door, and kind of off we went.

Kevin: So the two of you kind of started the farm together?

Dan Martino: Yeah, definitely. my brother was a finance major. And so, you know, Hey, here's this cool idea of oyster farming and we could be the first farm on Martha's Vineyard and we'll, we'll make a buttload of money and… He put together a business plan and we were millionaires like overnight. And, and then, obviously what is on paper, is not how a farm actually [00:10:00] operates and that's not reality. Right. And so come to find out there were already more than a dozen farms on Martha's Vineyard and. The town was not ready to just hand us a license.

It actually took us three years to get a permit. like there was lawsuits, and there was lots of people saying no, and it was a giant hassle. But eventually we got a farm, and then it was like everything we had learned, well, none of that was applicable to the location we had picked, so we had to kind of learn it all over again, and fail a lot. And honestly, it was being young. I think knowing that we were young enough to try something crazy. And if we failed, we would be able to recover from that, financially or just even egotistically. but also it was like listening to our elders.

You know, we applied for a license, we got denied. Based on kind of a, I have zero experience filming a TV show does not mean you actually can farm oysters like that, [00:11:00] you know, and there was, there's a lot of truth to that. so then I sought out some of the local farmers on the island.

Dan Martino: I went and worked for one of them, Sweet Neck Oysters in Eggertown and he mentored me for about a year or two on the Martha's Vineyard style of farming oysters and. it's the message I try to teach young people is like, I was actually smart enough just to listen to people older than me that had done it before. And I was able to put aside that I thought I knew everything and instead listen to people who actually knew more than me. And I really do think that's why we were successful.

Kevin: So you said that the, that you learned the Martha's Vineyard way of growing oysters. What is that way and is it different than more coastal kind of growing?

Dan Martino: Yeah, and that's where you start getting into merroir and different environments. And that's really where you start to learn [00:12:00] that.even if you have two farms that are right next door to each other, there's going to be differences in how those farmers approach that body of water and how that body of water influences the product in the end.

And so, on the East Coast, predominantly, oysters, especially in Massachusetts, are farmed on tidal flats, right? the low tide goes out. The oysters are there on the shoreline. they might be in bags or they might just be on the bottom. and the farmer can walk out in some knee high boots and pick up their oysters and off they go to the market.

Martha's Vineyard, we don't have those tidal flats. Our elevation, literally kind of just goes straight up. So when we get a low tide, the water might only move a foot. so there is no space intertidal zoned of actually farm oysters. So we're considered deep water farmers where, we have these cages that sit, anywhere from 10 feet to 25 feet underwater 24 hours a day.

They're always [00:13:00] underwater.so this is a very different style of farming than most places, on the east coast. And then,it's very different from the Fisher Island model that I was trying to replicate where he is in a deep water zone, that farm is in deep water, but he's using lanternets, it's these Japanese type style of nets that hang down into the water column. Which is something that isn't done on Martha's Vineyard, and so when I was trying to pitch that concept of farming to, to the,those who permit on the island, They couldn't grasp that concept. It was, it was something new that wasn't tried and true on the Vineyard. And so, ultimately there was pushback against it.

And once I had learned the Martha's Vineyard style of farming, that, that bottom cage gear,how to work a lease site like that, the permitting people were more open to permitting something that, they could see over in the neighboring town was already successful.

Kevin: So right now on your farm, what you're doing is all bottom [00:14:00] cages, I guess if it's 25 feet down, that's, unless you're going to have long lines and floating gear, you gotta be deep, right?

Dan Martino: Yeah, and there's, and we're learning there's, there is too deep also, right? Like the further down you go, if we were in, 50 feet of water, there might not be enough food. phytoplankton or algae that deep in the water column. So there is a thing that, you could be too deep. one of the, one of the great things that being in a subtitle lease like we are, is it allows for 3d farming, right?

We have our cages sitting on the bottom and 20 feet of water, but we can put long lines, above them when we can suspend things in the water column. Above those cages. And so all of a sudden the farm becomes way more productive than any other farming system on earth, which is really awesome.

Kevin: So how do you do that? Do you have lines that, that you can suspend cages or bags, grow out [00:15:00] bags, somewhere along the water column up off the bottom?

Dan Martino: Yeah, that's a great question. and so, and that's what we're all playing with here on the Vineyard. One of my buddies up in Chillmark has taken the bottom cages, and he's floating them now. He's laid out a long line system, he's attached his cages to that system, and they're hovering basically in the center of the water column. Right? for us, our approach has been, we can keep those bottom cages on our bottom. we're lucky enough that our site, provides enough food in those deeper waters.

So we're just kind of getting bonus things above. Right now we're doing blue mussels in the water column above our oyster cages, right? And we do seaweed in the wintertime. Right now we have a line of kelp growing above those oyster cages. So it's almost like you have layers of farm.

Kevin: Yeah, it's fascinating. I did see that you grow seaweed and mussels and I think bay scallops as well. And are those in the water column above the bottom cages? [00:16:00] So you're kind of using all of your equipment in different ways, depending on the season or the thing that you're growing, right?

Dan Martino: Yeah, and it really drives you to be neurotic and, and just your, it destroys your brain and your mental capacity because it one day you're trying to deal with the cages underneath them. And then the next day you're dealing with the seaweed that's floating on the surface of the water. But it's definitely 3D farms are, the most productive, most efficient ways that you could possibly farm on planet Earth.

And it kind of drives me crazy. Honestly, it's like a pet peeve when I see these flip farms, which is floating gear, and we do have floating cages also. But you'll see these giant lines, a mile of cages that are floating on the surface of the water. And they're each like one bag inside of that float. Maybe that bag has like 200 oysters tops in it. And so you're looking at the efficiency or productivity of that. And it's just [00:17:00] awful. Like it's like. To me, it's a waste of space, where at least if you have floating gear, let's make that gear, four or five tiers deep, right? but I think that's something that the industry will, it's a good way for those farmers to expand perhaps in the future, right? Like, they could start with one bag floating on the surface, and then they can make that two or three or four bags deep. So I think it's a reminder that this industry's still in its infancy and we're all kind of still trying to figure out how to make it work. Like we're all trying to figure out what to do with our infrastructure. 

Kevin: There's some farmers that are taking their bottom cages and making the vertical line that goes to the surface a muscle rope, right? And now all of a sudden you can, or a seaweed line. More and more I'm finding that people who are growing seaweed are also suspending Oyster cages along the same lines that the seaweed is suspended from at different levels in the water column, [00:18:00] which seems like a pretty good double use of your equipment and your water.

Dan Martino: Definitely. and that's kind of the point too, of like infrastructure, right? like you said, like using your seaweed lines and repurposing them to, to farm shellfish with.

which is a really smart idea because for, at least for us, we grow kelp. that's a winter species only crop, right? So we harvest that in April. Replant again in December. So, during the summer months, those lines are literally empty. and that's why we've chosen now, we're using that for mussels, right? That's, soon as we harvest that seaweed, the spat collectors for the mussels go out. We're capturing the baby mussel spat, and then they're growing on the seaweed lines. So, like you said, it's a repurposing of that infrastructure.

Kevin: It's interesting because, land farmers have been doing that forever. One season you grow corn and then you grow beans or whatever the case may be. And a similar thing is happening in aquaculture as [00:19:00] well.

Dan Martino: But it's also, I think it's rare, unfortunately it's very difficult and I'm glad you brought up land farming because I try to always compare the two and, it's much easier to be a land farmer in the sense that, once you're permitted to grow on your soil, you can plant whatever you want, right? If I want to do soybeans or corn or whatever, every year, nobody's there to govern that or regulate that. It's much different for ocean farmers. I have friends that have only been permitted to grow seaweed. They're not allowed to grow shellfish on their farms. and it really is a regulatory, species case by case basis, you have to get permission to grow clams or to grow oysters you know, you don't get to just plant whatever you want, which is like, what the WTF, like, why is there that much regulation and control over what an ocean farmer can do? Especially when you compare it to a land [00:20:00] farmer,

Kevin: Is that because you think maybe, different regulatory agencies, one's responsible for clams, the other for seaweed, the other for oysters, and they're just not talking to each other?

Dan Martino: That's a great question. I think it's more of the fisheries were always,you know, farmers are right now, we're kind of replacing fishermen in the eyes of the government. We're being put in places where fishermen are not fishing. That's one of the rules is you're not allowed to have a farm in an area that a fisherman, is already taking catch from. but each fisherman, you know, if he's a lobster fisherman, he needs a lobster permit. If he's a scallop fisherman, he needs a scallop permit. If he's an oyster fisherman, he needs an oyster permit. And so they've applied that rule to ocean farmers. And they just say, you need a different permit for each species you want to farm, which really doesn't make sense. But it's almost more of a bleeding over of fishing regulations into the ocean farming [00:21:00] community.

Kevin: change happens so slowly sometimes, especially if the government is involved.

Dan Martino: Oh yeah.

Kevin: So I have to ask though, we hear so much about merroir and the phytoplankton and algaes and other things in the water that basically feed the oyster. So as you're growing oysters at different depths in the water column, I would think that you probably have different phytoplankton that they're consuming. Do you find that they taste different or grow differently at different depths?

Dan Martino: I think you are 100 percent right that they would be different. I don't have a setup where I could taste, like, I don't have oysters on my surface and on my bottom. I should do that. Like, that would just actually be a really fun experiment. I can definitely taste the merroir difference in my oyster throughout the season.right now they're very salty. They're very sweet. In six months, that flavor will change a little bit, [00:22:00] from where they are right now. So there is definitely a seasonality to it. I mean, just like a wine vineyard, like there's some wine vineyards that have little micro environments within that parcel of grape. Right. and they're able to, to tell the difference in the same would be true on an oyster farm for sure. Like my farm has a sandy bottom, right. It would be fun to like lay cobblestones on half of it and then just see what difference you'd get from the oysters being on the sand versus the cobblestone, because there would be a difference there would be.

 There's not one that's better than the other. I think that's an important distinction to make because everybody wants to be like, Oh, my oyster is the best or, a Martha's Vineyard oyster is the best. And yeah, they are the best. Uh, but honestly, it comes down to what you like as a consumer, like what oyster you want to taste Or, do you like red wine or white wine? Do you like Pinot Grigio or Sauvignon Blanc? Like, there's differences in the oysters the [00:23:00] exact same way as with wine. And so that's what we should be celebrating is that the fact that, right, one's grown on sand, one's grown on cobblestone, one's grown in the mud. Can you taste the difference? And if so, how is it making it different?

Kevin: And that's really the interesting part of the industry right now is trying to describe those differences. . And so much of it is subjective, so much of oyster farming is done in intertidal water or at least shallow water. And this is what I think you refer to as open ocean farming, right? These deep cold waters of the ocean.

Dan Martino: Exactly. Yep.

Kevin: If you're down 20 feet you're not getting the wave energy So do you find that the oysters are flatter and longer rather than plumper and thicker shells because of that?

Dan Martino: Yeah, I think they naturally would be. We put a lot of husbandry techniques into our seed. For the first year of our oyster, it's actually in a [00:24:00] pond, in a floating, nursery system. We're making sure there's a lot of wave agitation so that it creates a deep cup on the oyster. But that's only for year one for our product. And then the oyster is put onto the open ocean farm, into the bottom cages. And so what that's creating is the first inch of the oyster from the bill to the kind of halfway or a third of the way back is a deep cup, smooth product. And then from there we let nature go for two years on the bottom and you get, like you're saying, it's kind of a flatter, it's an extension of that cup, but it's more natural, right?

That was also one of the ideas we had early on, too, was like, why don't we sell different classes of oysters? Why don't we sell big grilling oysters, little cocktail oysters, and one that's in between, right? I think eventually I would love to do that. we just can't produce enough oysters. Oysters at the moment, 

Kevin: How large is your farm? How many acres do [00:25:00] you have?

Dan Martino: I have four acres that are in production. then we just started the other one acre, which is one of those flip farm systems, the floating cages system. So five total. but it's also about, just productivity, like the average mortality rate for. A farmer is about 50 percent every year that they have a product, right? So if you bring in a million oysters,on average, 500,000 will die year one, year two, you're losing another half. So 250, 000 are dying year two, potentially.

So year three, you're bringing 250, 000 to market. And that's an industry average, right? So I would assume, I know I did everybody in their first five years of farming is at least at a 50 percent mortality rate. And that's just learning your site and learning,maybe a big storm comes and just knocks the crap out of you.

Like that's [00:26:00] farming, Yeah. So it's the size of a farm definitely matters. our focus now is really just getting that mortality rate under control. And. And the hardest part is if it takes three years for your product to come to market. If we make a slight change in year one, if I put the, that seed out in the open ocean year one, I have to wait three years to see the results of that experiment, right? So nothing happens quick.

Kevin: And so you're constantly rotating and putting in new spat as the other ones are growing big, so you have a supply year round?

Dan Martino: Yeah, and that's part of the challenge as a new farmer too, is you don't have that rotating inventory, right? So we probably have a million oysters on our farm right now, but half of that is at least a one year old class oyster. That's not going to become market ready this year. So you have to build up over time, that inventory. [00:27:00]

Kevin: What kind of market do you have? Do you only sell in the Martha's Vineyard area or do you mail order or distribute it elsewhere?

Dan Martino: We are only on Martha's Vineyard. we decided early on that's what we wanted to do. We have, to get to the island, you have to take a ferry or an airplane. And so from a exporting perspective, that's just an added cost that we would have to absorb. so we wanted to focus on just the island economy.

we like keeping the money also in the island economy. We liked that the local restaurants are making a profit and that staying in the community. We do feel like the oyster, it, I mean, it's special just because of the geography that it's being grown in. the Cape and Islands were formed, 40, 000 years ago by a glacier that kind of sat here and melted. So that's pretty unique minerals and pretty unique, geography that is not easily replicated around the world. and then the way we do it in the open ocean and everything, gives it a really nice [00:28:00] flavor. So we're just trying to celebrate kind of those unique qualities and we want to make sure that the restaurants we're in understand that,

Kevin: I saw on your website that you also do oyster tours, and I'm assuming to farm your oysters 20 feet down you use a barge or a boat with obviously a crane on it and, and so if, somebody takes a tour, are they going to go out on one of those vessels and watch you do your work?

Dan Martino: Yeah. No,we, we put weights on them and we throw them overboard and get it up close and personal. That would be fun. But the water's too murky to be able to really see anything like we scuba dive for fun and in the middle of summer you can see one or two feet in front of your face I mean, there's that much food which is a really good thing for a farmer who's farming oysters so yeah, what we do is we bring people out .We have a 30 foot boat that's dedicated for our tours now and it's byob and you come out for an hour and I host them and I kind of just [00:29:00] talk about the process and how I got into it and, everything I know about oysters. And we go, we get out on the farm and the crew's out there working and picking up cages and, we eat the oysters right there on the farm and talk about merroir and what we're tasting and try to describe, the sommelier like flavors of an oyster. And it's just a good time, man. I mean, you get to throw the shells overboard right back into the water and, sail around the Vineyard while drinking your favorite wine, right? Hanging out with me who stinks like oyster poo and, cause I, I jump literally, I jump right off the farm onto these tours. So I'm usually covered in mud and, and pretty smelly. So you get a big hug as soon as you come on the oyster tour.

Kevin: I think people like authenticity more and more when it comes to discovering food, especially oysters. And also I think that your kind of exclusivity, to Martha's Vineyard is kind of special that makes you pretty unique,

Dan Martino: [00:30:00] And we're in a tourist economy, right? And so people are here, from all over the world to try to experience the Vineyard. And so, yeah, we tapped into that pretty early on. I think we saw that market it's kind of a funny story. So when we got the farm, a bunch of the homeowners sued the town for permitting an oyster farm in front of their house. It's kind of the nimbyism. They didn't, the reality was that they didn't know what an oyster farm would look like. I'm originally from Texas, so they assumed I would build an oil rig looking contraption in front of their house. So they had worst case scenarios in their minds, right? Like we would be dumping fertilizer in the ocean, or we would be dumping bleach in the water, like things that don't exist. and so we tried to look around for examples that we could show them and really nothing existed. this is back like 2012. And so we thought, well, what a cool idea it would be to go to the local schools, bring our oyster gear, dress up like fishermen,talk to these people's kids about oyster [00:31:00] farming. Then the kids could go home and tell the parents, their D-bags for hating on one of the most sustainable farming practices on earth.

So that's how it started. And then all of a sudden we get calls from others, other island schools, and they wanted us to participate. And then we're getting calls from the parents of these children, who heard it from the kid, and they're like, Well, I want to see how an oyster farm works. And then we were getting calls from colleges, and they wanted their students to be able to come out to the farm, to see it.

And of course, Greg and I are big on just, trying to be smart and get smarter. And so we never say no to that kind of stuff. So for probably the first five years we were doing tours, nobody's getting paid, we were just giving oysters away to people, showing them the farm. And then eventually we got the idea of like, well, man, we should start charging people for this. Maybe we can make some little extra revenue on the side by doing this. And I think that first year when we opened up for tours, somehow everybody knew and it just [00:32:00] became very time consuming. And we've scaled back actually the amount of tours we offer now. We could probably do them seven days a week. I mean there's that much demand for them here, especially in the summertime. But we made the conscious choice of like, do we want to be tour guides for a living or do we want to be farmers? And so we've balanced the two out.but there's nothing more fun than going to Virginia or Maine or wherever and meeting like small time farmer guy and going on his farm like and maybe they don't have a tour operation but you end up knocking on their door and you're the first person they've ever given a tour to and that could even open up their revenue stream and I've done that like we we just knocked on a door in France we I was with in France with my family we showed up to an oyster farmer's door and he didn't speak English. Luckily the wife did. And we like finagled our way into a farm tour on this guy's farm. And it was like one of the greatest experiences we've ever had. And everybody, on his side of the family and my side, our [00:33:00] kids got to meet each other and it was like just this really cool bonding experience.

And they had never offered tours before ever. They didn't know people were even interested in what they did. Right. And then it was like, I think after we left. The light bulb started going off in his head of like, wow, I should, this is something I could potentially do for now on also. it's like you said, people want to know where their food comes from. And the reality too is, the way that we all farm, there's nothing to hide. And I think that's a very important point. Like if you go to a, an industrial chicken farmer, like, no, he doesn't want to show you what he's doing. Most likely it's probably, you're going to walk into that warehouse and there's going to be dead birds on the ground and a lot of things that they're going to have to explain, that they don't necessarily want the public to see where oyster farming is, the opposite where We all anybody could come onto an oyster farm on any given day and watch what we do and there's nothing to hide. And [00:34:00] that's how food should be. Right?

Kevin: Absolutely. Now I read that you guys are the first farm in the United States to be a European Union, Organic certified. Tell me a little bit about that.

Dan Martino: That was a, that was us circumventing the United States government in a clever way, right? We wanted to get USDA organic certified, and that is not an option for seaweed and shellfish farmers. USDA does not recognize these crops as potentially organic, there's no regulatory framework that exists yet to certify these products very much and therefore they haven't been, we're working on that. I'm actually on some working groups with USDA that's trying to get seaweeds and shellfish now, recognized for that status.

So we decided, well, if USDA is not going to do it, let's go to the EU and they'll do it. And the EU has [00:35:00] been certifying shellfish and seaweeds organic for decades, right? So it was the process of just one of these third party. inspectors that, that do the work for the government and they inspect your facilities, they inspect your farm and your process. So they came out, they go through the big paper trail and then they go through the actual process of how you farm, your products. And after that, after that process with them, yeah, we were awarded EU organic certification, which is just as good to us as a USDA organic certification would have been right.

Unfortunately, it didn't really boost sales at all like we thought it would. We thought there'd be a lot of fanfare and everybody was kind of just like, yeah, duh, like we all know that stuff's organic. Like, what do you, why'd you go through the paperwork when we all know it's already kind of organic. What it ended up boiling down to was water quality. None of us are using pesticides, like none of us are using fertilizers or [00:36:00] feeds. So it like intuitively shellfish farming and seaweed farming is organic as long as you're doing it in a clean body of water, Right? And so that's the real sticky point who's monitoring the body of water? Who's ensuring that it's clean or there's no contaminants right spilling into it But you know amazingly that's stuff that the state and the government and the towns already do And when you get your farm, on your permit, it states, are you an approved source or a conditionally approved body of water or in a restricted body of water? So we had to show that, one, we are in the highest grade of water, which we are. Two, that people are monitoring that water quality to ensure it, stays the top quality and, our towns do that for us, our state does that for us, and then we actually have, monitoring probes on our farm, that are constantly checking that water quality, so then it was just a matter [00:37:00] of making sure our hoses are food grade, safe and not like your garden hose that you use in the backyard, right?

Like small little things like that. So I think if you're in an approved grade A water quality site, we're all pretty much organic by definition.

Kevin: So how far off the coast is Martha's Vineyard? 

Dan Martino: I think we're three miles off the coast. 

Kevin: Because I would think that being kind of offshore a little bit like you are and in deeper water you probably have really high water quality.

Dan Martino: Yeah, it's the cleanest, it's the cleanest possible and the Vineyard has done a great job. this place was like a hippie commune back in the day. and so they were very anti establishment everything. So there's no food chains on the island.

We have a stop and shop, which is our groceries and we have a dairy queen. That's it. Everything else is a mom and pop, right? It's a singularly owned [00:38:00] thing and so that made sure that we didn't have, pollutants spilling out in the water, or we didn't have,... Love the hippie generation cause they were all about, saving the whales and the environment.

Kevin: Do you get issues, especially in your deep water of like Vibrio or or other sort of diseases that can affect oysters or your ability to sell them?

Dan Martino: We, no, we haven't experienced any of that. ponds will, like salt ponds. they might get cyanobacteria. Vibrio is a big thing for some of the island farmers that are in the ponds. It was a blessing in disguise, right? Like we wanted to be in a pond when we started farming. My initial application was for that. It got denied. I was forced to farm the open ocean. That was part of the new regulations that the town kind of put on me at that time. didn't necessarily want to be out in the open ocean. It seemed like a whole lot of work. but now it was a blessing our water quality is grade A stuff. And we don't necessarily have the warming problems that are happening in the [00:39:00] ponds, or the bacteria, or the vibrio, or the pollution, nitrogen and phosphorus issues.

Kevin: Being more exposed in the open ocean, though, you probably have a lot of weather related issues,

Dan Martino: Yep, and that's our mortality rates. That's, we'll get a nor'easter and it'll take out, 30 percent of our farm, right? And so it's been figuring out how to design the infrastructure to kind of withstand, those weather systems. And so that's been the main challenge. But I do see a future where we're kind of a, a leading model for deep water farms.

if you looked ahead into the future, let's say all of our ponds become degraded and you can't farm in them anymore. Well, there's a lot of open ocean around the United States. my cages now, they're maybe four feet by four feet in size. I'd love to see them be the size of cars. Right, or shipping container sized cages where you're just massive industrial scale picking up one cage and there's a hundred thousand oysters in [00:40:00] it. like that's how you, that's how you turn oysters into a commodity almost, right? It gets to that size.

Kevin: You had mentioned to me before, that NOAA wanted to reclassify oyster farms as fisheries.

Dan Martino: Yeah, we just went through that so they, wanted to kind of take control of farms, classify them into different categories of fisheries. because they were worried about us killing mammals, whales, dolphins, seals, which no oyster farm that I know of has ever killed any marine mammal. But for some reason they, they felt the need to assert themselves. And luckily, that didn't happen. It's that blurred line again, going back to fishermen and farmers of the ocean, right? Like they keep thinking of us as fishermen. but what we're doing is the complete opposite of fishing. where fishing is like hunter gatherers that, are all fighting over the same, farmers are literally like [00:41:00] stewards of the land, right?

Like we, we understand we have to take care of these things. If a whale dies on my farm, nobody's going to buy my oyster. That's a big marketing problem. So, I'm doing everything in my control to make sure that doesn't happen. and whales aren't dumb either. if they swim towards an area and echo location, a bunch of gear sitting there, they're the last thing that whale's going to do is swim into that area. Whales are pretty smart.

Kevin: Tell me a little bit about your seaweed production, because I think seaweed production is a really exciting aquaculture thing.

Dan Martino: We actually started growing seaweed before we grew an oyster we got in very early on with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and the Martha's Vineyard Shellfish Group, to grow kelp seaweed. They were learning how to raise it in the hatcheries. They needed some people,who would work for free and put it on their farm and try to grow it.

And so of course my brother and I raised our hands and, we actually planted some research kelp seaweed. On our farm before we [00:42:00] actually had a permit to grow oysters. so that was, 2013 or 2012. And what we found out is that it grows, but it doesn't grow that well. because we're so far away, three miles offshore we lack a phosphate nutrient in our soils, right? We don't have bedrock that erodes. So we don't have this mineral that kelp needs. and so because of that, we end up getting a stunted kelp product. which we marketed as golden baby kelp, which is a really nice product actually. And it's well suited for eating raw.

You can throw it like right in a seaweed salad. You don't even have to chop it up. Like it's a perfect size for that. It's like a spaghetti noodle, basically. But compared to Maine, who's growing 12 foot long blades of kelp, or Alaska, who has 20 foot long blades of kelp very different product. But seaweed is definitely the future of food. And it's already a trillion dollar industry globally. by [00:43:00] weight, it's the most produced product in the world is seaweeds, right? Farmed. 90 percent of  this stuff is already farmed in Asia and, specifically China. And they're kind of just way ahead of the United States when it comes to seaweed. But we grow it every year. I've, I use it on everything. I dry it as flakes and I'll just, I season it with everything. It brings the flavors out of whatever you're putting it on. Basically it's pure umami.

Kevin: Do you find that diners are kind of opening up to the concept of eating more seaweed as opposed to farm grown plants?

Dan Martino: Yeah, I think everybody's open to seaweed for sure. Like we all have heard the health benefits and we know it's good and it's can be farmed sustainably. I just learned like 60 percent of all American meals come from a restaurant, right? People aren't cooking at home as much. People go out to eat.

So the real thing is, well, how do you get a chef to use your seaweed? And that's the, that's [00:44:00] been the stopping point. If chefs don't like it because they can't make a 40 plate of seaweed. Right? It ends up being like a garnish on the side or like a, maybe you do a seaweed salad that's crammed in the corner next to the salmon or whatever the plate is. So really it's getting chefs to play with the products more and figure out how they can make a high value end product with it. And until that happens, you won't see seaweeds, in your restaurants. maybe it's figuring out a way to put it into things that we already love, seaweed, hot dogs,

Kevin: Salty sea dogs. So what would you say are some of the biggest challenges that you've had in developing the farm and building the business?

Dan Martino: For us, we were mentored to start very small.right. So I think our first year we brought in 10, 000 oysters. we lost [00:45:00] half of them instantly in a storm and ended up bringing a couple thousand to market. Right. So for us, it's been scaling.We've slowly been scaling over the last decade, every year, basically doubling in size.And now we're at the point of, we're selling about as much as two full time guys and a couple of part time guys can do, right? we need to try to make that leap now from, mom and pop shop to, a lot of full time employees. And so that's the, that's our new risk, right? That’s we were deciding, do we take that on or not? ‘Cause my brother and I were doing great. Like we've, we've got families and we can make a living doing this. but we can't really grow anymore without bringing more people on board. And so I think, and that's a challenge, probably all businesses go through, right, is how do you make that leap? Probably the best thing we did was obtaining our wholesale license early on in the [00:46:00] business.

Massachusetts has this built in middleman. all seafood has to pass through this middleman wholesaler before it can get to the public. So that includes fish and ring. That's all fish, but it's also ocean farmers, right? So in Massachusetts, it's illegal for the farmer to sell the oyster directly to the public. It has to be sold to a wholesale dealer first, that dealer gets to middle the product price. Decide where it goes, and then the dealer gets to sell it to the public. And so that's where everything is technically Martino's Seafood. That's the company. That's the wholesale company. we built our own wholesale, facility. We obtained those licenses. State inspects our facility 23 times a year. as farmers, we sell the product to the wholesale entity and then the wholesale entity gets to decide where that product goes for the end result. so having that control over the product has allowed us to get the highest margins for [00:47:00] it.

Kevin: It's almost necessary to keep control over it because to send it out to a third party and then send it back has got to be just complicated.

Dan Martino: A hundred percent, but the also the challenge is, my wife and I were very lucky to get our house on the Vineyard before, the one percenters really moved in because now this place is unattainable for your common person to own a house. the cheapest real estate here is a million dollars right now.

And people are buying that and tearing it down to build their multimillion dollar house. And so in order to have a wholesale facility, you actually have to be a landowner here, right? Like you have to have a place to build that wholesale facility. So you have only a handful of farmers on the island that are, actually own their own wholesale facilities. And the rest of them, especially the new farmers that don't own a house on the Vineyard, they don't have the option to control their product, [00:48:00] right? And, being sympathetic towards that, we will middle product for, we do it for a couple of farmers where they don't have their own wholesale facility, but we'll buy it for them, and then sell it to whoever they are lining up those relationships with, right? Cause we want them to be able to maintain that control of their product.

Kevin: I love looking at your website and seeing how many different things you're doing there with the oysters and the seaweed, then the mussels and the scallops. Are you doing a lot of bay scallops?

Dan Martino: Yeah, we, what did we buy? I think we brought in 50, 000 of them our first year, more than half died, which is normal. We've learned they're very finicky. They,the price of them has gone up almost astronomically over the last decade, it used to be 6 a pound, and now they're like 30 a pound.

So the money is now there for the farmer to, to put in the labor to make this [00:49:00] work. the challenge is that it's just little dainty they got all their little eyes, they're a little, and they're, they're smarter than oysters and you can't air dry them and you can't throw them around like you can an oyster. You have to be very gentle when you're handling bay scallops and if they're out of the water too long, they die. Or if the fouling gets to be too much, they die. so these are all the things we're learning now. but we are bringing some to market. We brought a couple thousand to market last year. and we put them right on our raw bars. Like we just, you don't cook them. You don't do anything. You shuck them. You put the meat in the shell and you serve it on the raw bar and there's nothing better.

Kevin: You're just giving me more excuse to come up to Martha's Vineyard. 

Dan Martino: Come on out, man. I love having people out to the farm. 

Kevin: I'll even let you put a weight on me and throw me overboard if I can check out the bottom cages.

Dan Martino: Well, it's cool to scuba dive it. You go down and you get around these cages and there's just striped bass circling you and baby fish all within them and lobsters poking their heads out and eels.[00:50:00]. We have a ton of eels. Like, just the artificial, oyster reef, right. That we create down there, is unbelievable. it's like swimming in an aquarium. Like it's awesome.

Kevin: Do you have issues on the bottom in that depth with like drills and sponges and other predators to the oysters?

Dan Martino: Yeah, those guys are relentless. The oyster drills are like unreal. and we have barnacles, which is a big problem. we've noticed that the oyster drills will target the barnacles, before they'll target the oysters. So there's actually this relationship now with the drill where we want them to eat all the barnacles off the oysters, but we don't want them to eat the oysters. So we've taken to a hand removal process. Every time we dump out a bag of oysters, if we find the drills, we sweep them into the boat. we used to dump them on the shore, but then we learned that they'll crawl back into the ocean so we literally dry them out. I feed them to my chickens. They like them. but we're trying to maintain a balance, I guess, is the point, right? Like we don't want to exterminate that species off the farm because it is [00:51:00] helping us. There's all kinds of problems.

Kevin: Well, like you said, you're farmers, so there's always something isn't there.

Dan Martino: But we can learn from that too, right? Like what's great is that we're new farmers. Like we, we can see the damage that, spraying pesticides on crops can do. So we know that's not the right approach, right? We're not locked in some 10, 000 year old tradition. The industry is starting now, right? in a very different period of time as opposed to when agriculture started.

Kevin: That is such an interesting way of stating it. You are the new guarde. And it's the new, future of aquaculture and oyster farming

Dan Martino: And what's cool too about your podcast here is, like, it's so new that things like what you're doing just by getting the different perspectives of the industry and creating a resource for that is the most valuable. Like that's what the industry really needs right now. Like we're just a bunch of mom [00:52:00] and pop farmers, right? Like we don't have a Got Milk campaign. We don't have that kind of money to like, to advertise this product. So we're relying on the different perspectives and the farmers to get out there and talk and people like you that are giving a platform for this information to get out there. And it's gonna be a grassroots industry And that's the other nature of the beast is that we're not the establishment farming community we're a bunch of individuals trying to make this happen.

Kevin: Well, I can't wait to see what you guys continue to do and inspire others like you to do it. There's plenty of room for a lot of different people and if we do it correctly, like I think you are, everybody wins. So, congratulations on your success so far and I look forward to seeing more in the future.

Dan Martino: Thanks, Kevin. You too. Appreciate it.

Kevin: That's it for this episode of OYSTER-ology. Thanks again to my guest, Dan Martino of Cottage City Oysters. You can find their website in our show notes to this episode. And [00:53:00] while you're there, please Follow the podcast and please leave a comment telling me what you think of the show, just click the link called send us a text. I read everyone, I've got a thick shell, and I'll always reply, so don't be shy. Thanks for listening, and join us next time as we pry open the shell of another interesting OYSTER-ology topic.

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