New Hampshire's commercial fishing industry could get a boost from an ambitious new aquaculture project.
Three miles off the coast of Rye sits the nation's first open ocean mussel growing operation.
NHPR Correspondent Roger Wood reports.
AMB 1 – Mussels pulled from ropes
Fishermen are hauling blue mussels up on board the 45 foot Eastern Star.
They fall into buckets after a special machine skims the shellfish from the 35 foot line they’ve been growing on out in the Atlantic.
AMB 2 – Sound of fishermen working on boat
Three Portsmouth fishermen, Andy Lang, Robert Bryant and his son Jonathan are working that machine.
Today’s catch netted about 500 pounds of large blue mussels that Lang and his partners have named Isles of Shoals Supremes.
Lang says that the idea for the commercial venture grew out of his contact with the University of New Hampshire Seagrant program.
(Lang 1) :08
“They had a program for commercial fishermen who were interested in acquiring a mussel line.”
Lang leases five acres of open ocean from the Federal and State Governments.
There he’s anchored ten 600 foot long horizontal ropes with granite blocks, then raised sections to the surface using float balls.
He grows the mussels on thinner lines that hang from the main ropes.
The actual growing process involves the seeding of the ropes with very young mussels.
Dr. Richard Langan, with UNH’s Open Ocean Aquaculture program, says those fertilized eggs turn into swimming larvae.
(Langan) :11
“We know that at certain times of the year, if we put ropes out, we can catch very large quantities of these mussels. They settle on the rope, and then they grow up into what we call mussel seed.”
When they're large enough, the seed mussels are stripped off the ropes and placed in long circular netting, or socks, until harvesting.
Langan says that the length of the growing cycle makes the venture viable.
(Langan 2) :14
“We found that the production cycle, meaning that the time that you catch the wild swimming larvae of the blue mussel, you catch that on a rope, to the time it reaches market size was about a year, and that's very good for cold water species.”
The shellfish farmers currently net $1.25 a pound for their efforts.
And Lang concedes that his efforts have not yet netted a profit.
(Lang 2) :13
“Most of this has been out of pocket. I do believe, you have to believe that this is going to come in to fruition or else you're wasting your time, because it's a very harsh environment, it is very costly.”
But the locally grown blue mussels are already a hit with consumers.
AMB 3 - sound inside fish market – running water in lobster tank)
Right now, only one outlet, Seaport Fish, based in Rye, sells them.
Owner Richard Pettigrew says most of his clients are high end restaurants in the Seacoast.
And he says that he often sells out of the locally harvested mussels.
(Pettigrew 1) :17
“The meat and the muscle is a lot larger than your average, any other mussel that's out there, because of the way they farm them in the open waters, not in the bottom or attached to anything, they put their energy into producing more meat instead of producing more shell.”
Fishermen Lang and Bryant have some stiff competition.
Most of the blue mussels sold on the East Coast, some 40 million pounds a year, come from Atlantic Canada.
But Pettigrew likes the fact that these mussels are grown locally and harvested by New Hampshire fishermen.
(Pettigrew 2) :12
“It's just going to be supply and demand, if they're able to keep up demand. It's really going to be what the potential of the harvest is and the re-seeding of the mussels to keep the project going.”
(Cross fade sound of market to sound on boat.)
Right now, Lang and Bryant work their mussel farm when the weather permits.
They believe the potential is there to produce up to 100 thousand pounds or more a year.
But Lang admits the operation has a long way to go to hit that goal
Still despite the start-up costs and the hard physical labor, Lang is confident it won’t be too long before Isles of Shoals Supremes will be gracing menus up and down the east coast.
For NHPR News, this is Roger Wood.
