Oyster Farms Help Grow County’s Economy

GREEN CREEK – As Cape May County’s watery farms grow oysters from seed to maturity in various locations they are helping build a sustainable economy in this tourist-dependent area. The payoff can be rewarding for those willing to invest long hours and at least two years before market-ready oysters are produced.
The once-thriving Delaware Bay oyster fishery was decimated by MSX and in the mid-1950s by Dermo, diseases that afflicted only those shellfish. A stalwart Rutgers University professor and scientist, Dr. Harold Haskin, sought to change that situation Although he died 12 years ago, the work he advanced thrives. Oysters are growing on mud flats in Delaware Bay, resistant to those two diseases, thanks, in part, to the work he began.
Freeholder Will Morey, board liaison to county economic development, is charged with finding new industries and avenues of employment that will provide year-round jobs and bring money into the county throughout the year. In a report to the board earlier this year, Morey highlighted aquaculture, brought to the fore by six “commercially viable oyster farmers with other entrants likely to appear in this burgeoning area” and wineries as offering economic promise.
“The majority of current growers, who have established notable early markets for their oysters, are in the process of working to set up a cooperative,” he wrote in April.
The Cape May Oyster Cooperative is a group of a half dozen rugged individuals. All are unafraid of back-breaking labor for hours at a time, mostly at low tide. Like land farmers who plant seed and carefully cultivate and await a crop, oyster farmers do likewise. They have a spirit to succeed.
The seed oysters they use are spawned at Rutgers University’s Aquaculture Innovation Center, under the watchful eye of David Jones, laboratory researcher and hatchery operations systems technology, not far from the Cape May-Lewes Ferry terminal in North Cape May.
By a continuous process of nurturing minute oysters with flowing salt water from Cape May Canal in an array of vats and tubs, fledglings grow to several millimeters, which are then sold to oyster farmers. Cooperative members then undertake the tedious process of placing the tiny seed oysters into plastic mesh “bags.” In those rugged containers, placed on metal bars on mud flats they will carefully tend them in bay tracts of perhaps 100 acres, leased from the state of New Jersey.
About 15 years ago, Stewart M. Tweed Jr., the county’s first marine extension agent, who died in 2007, studied at Rutgers under Haskin, who imparted knowledge of oysters to him. On those mud flats where Tweed first demonstrated techniques used to grow oysters, similar techniques are used at the Rutgers Haskin Shellfish Research Laboratory, Cape Shore Facility on the Green Creek bayfront. That is where some of those cooperative members labor to grow their oysters. Others have leased bottom from the state.
Atlantic Capes Fisheries, Inc., located on Ocean Drive in Lower Township, was an early commercial entrant into oyster farming. Today it is likely the region’s largest commercial producer of oysters. The firm uses the same techniques, improved slightly, at its floating nursery facility. That 75 feet by 35 feet nursery is the largest floating upwelling system on the East Coast, according to Brian Harman, oyster farm manager at Atlantic Capes. It was purchased from a New England Indian tribe that experimented, and then left the oyster business. The nursery was towed to its local mooring by one of the firm’s vessels.
The system used in the nursery is a slowly-moving paddle wheel that causes water to flow throughout the 4-feet-by-4-feet screened-bottom tanks. The water contains nutrients that help grow the seed oysters to about a half inch, which are then transferred to the Delaware Bay farm.
On a recent afternoon, 14 workers were tending to mesh bags of growing oysters, as low tide provided relatively easy access to the shellfish. Those humble oysters will, in time, become Cape May Salts, marketed by Atlantic Capes Fisheries Inc. to metropolitan and nearby restaurants.
Harman said the firm uses seed oysters from Aquaculture Innovation Center or Rutgers Cape Shore Facility on the bayfront here.
Humans are not the only ones working among young oysters; a number of egrets took advantage of the many tiny marine species brought to the oysters by the tide. Birds and humans seemed to work well side-by-side, as they do daily on the mud flats.
Lisa Calvo, Rutgers University aquaculture program coordinator, showed the Herald around the mud flats. The tract resembled a rice paddy. Workers were clad in shorts, bent over, spraying water over their precious crop to remove mud, others flipped bags of oysters from their frames. That movement promotes better health and growth. The airing at low tide also helps to promote a better shelf life than oysters that grow entirely underwater, Harman said.
“Oysters take on the flavor of where they are grown. That lends itself to consumption and creates an opportunity for marketing and branding,” Calvo said. She also works with New Jersey Sea Grant Consortium responsible for operations here as well as in Cumberland and Salem counties.
“It’s my job to help growers be as profitable and sustainable as possible,” said Calvo. She estimated that the research-based farm on the bay, last year, produced between 750,000 and 1 million oysters. It’s possible to fetch 50 cents per oyster, wholesale, she said. Should the cooperative acquire a refrigerated truck, as hoped with county assistance, and secures a central processing and warehousing site, that price could rise to perhaps 85 cents each.
“Our oysters from this region are the best I’ve ever tasted. There is something special about them. They hold their own in the marketplace,” Calvo added.
As with any relatively new endeavor, state regulations need adjustment. That’s because new industries may not fit neatly into existing laws and guidelines.
“They’ve got tremendous potential, but are limited by the regulatory system. They are not farming, but fishing,” said Dr. David Bushek, director, Rutgers University’s Haskins Laboratory. He was working with a group of university students learning first-hand about hard work in the shellfish industry at the Green Creek facility.
“There is quite a lot of development and improvement to be done,” Bushek said.
Disease resistance, which Haskins began working to advance in 1962, has resulted in a variety of oysters that, when raised locally, have a 90 percent survival rate, Bushek said. He noted “unselected lines” of oysters imported here will die from MSX or Dermo while those grown here from seed have a resistance to the diseases.
“It can get confusing and overwhelming to just start up,” said Harman. “A lot of New Jersey regulations have been modified to fit our operation. What causes confusion is that the regulations that exist are based on traditional, wild fishery of oysters, who dredge the bottom. We do it totally different. We are planning in containers, in oyster bags. We are tending to the oysters much as land-based farmers do. We are not a fishery, but a farm,” he said. He sees progress being made by state regulators in agencies, such as the Bureau of Shellfisheries to “streamline the process.”
“The future for new farmers looks good,” Harman added. “I have seen some who did it for a season, then quit. You have to enjoy it.”
Richard and Stephanie Cash are members of the local growers’ cooperative. In a July 16 telephone interview, Cash noted she and her husband “started in the last two to three years. It is a fairly new venture.”
The Cashes have learned the whims of nature hold sway over their production. “We have not had the best weather,” Cash said. She cited the extreme weather in the just-past winter as adding to the woes imparted by Hurricane Sandy. Regardless, “We are very encouraged. It is a wonderful opportunity. I cannot emphasize enough how great the resource is, how great the oysters we grow are.”
Cash, like Calvo, believes the area’s geography, and its “preserved wetlands give the oysters a special flavor.” She noted several outings the couple made to food events in Philadelphia where “people were thrilled by the flavor of the oysters. People said, ‘I have to get these.’ We were all saying there was barely enough.”
Oysters, especially those in those mesh bags on rebar (metal) framework about a foot off the mud flats, are exposed to air at low tide. While they tolerate cold, the sub-freezing brought about by the polar vortex took its toll on the oysters.
Cash noted cooperative members are “working together to start several cohorts of baby oysters in a protected environment” at the North Cape May aquaculture center. There, in a temperature-controlled environment, the spat (collections) of oysters can grow “without being buffeted by storms,” said Cash.
Concerted group effort ss made when it’s time to sort those oysters, as was done recently. It’s a time-consuming process, but one the members are committed to make as part of their oyster husbandry.
Cash lauded Calvo’s work with the group, especially for bringing in speakers on a variety of topics including pest control and oyster-growing arrangements, and finding infrastructure in the area.
“Developing infrastructure is more than half the battle. It’s labor intensive with rack and bag,” said Cash, alluding to the metal frames and mesh bags. “The real challenge is to develop the deep-water resource,” she added.
An understatement, Cash said, “It has been a learning experience, how to make oyster bags, bend rebar and the welding part is quite interesting. It’s helpful to have skills in our group.”
Cash admits much is dependent upon the weather and tides. While the couple may not tend to their oysters daily, there are other times when they may spend “Several days in a row,” doing chores with the crop.
A refrigerated van, which Cash said “has been approved,” will be “extremely helpful.” Because there is a “very ready market, based on our outing to Philadelphia,” such a truck would ensure fresh, refrigerated oysters to restaurants there and elsewhere.
Like wines, which take on a unique flavor from where grapes grew that produce them, oysters so the same.
“People really notice the obvious,” said Cash. “Our oysters are very different from Chesapeake (Bay) and other oysters, like those from Massachusetts or some from Long Island that taste briny, that don’t have a really good flavor that ours have.”
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