No Shell Game
Oyster co-op hopes to revive
Mystic’s faded shellfish industry
By Stephen Thompson,
Assistant Editor
n a little village near Connecticut’s famous
Mystic Seaport Museum, a small cooperative is
working to develop Mystic Harbor into a
thriving source of high-quality oysters. The
Noank Aquaculture Cooperative, in operation
for five years, is still working towards full profitability for its
members, but they are optimistic about its prospects.
Noank is an archetypal New England hamlet, with gracious
old wooden houses and narrow shaded streets, dominated
by a beautiful traditional white church on a hilltop. It’s
only a few miles away from Mystic, a popular tourist destination
known for its charming 19th-century atmosphere.
Both Mystic and Noank are part of the town of Groton,
and have gone from being sleepy, working- and middle-class
neighborhoods 40 years ago to fashionable haunts of the
rich. At the same time, the traditional industries of fishing,
oystering and lobstering declined drastically as marine
wildlife disappeared from the harbor. Now, among the luxurious
homes and sleek yachts, some people are trying to
redevelop one of those industries.
Co-op breeds new oyster strain
The Noank co-op is headquartered in a building at the foot
of Noank’s three-block-long Main Street, on the waterfront at
the mouth of historic Mystic Harbor. Most of the building is
dedicated to a hatchery for oysters and other shellfish,
presided over by the co-op’s only full-time employee.
Through trial and error, the hatchery has developed a strain
of oysters that thrives in the harbor and has developed a reputation
for quality among restaurateurs and other customers.
Rural Cooperatives met Jim Markow, president of the coop,
on a foggy June morning. He was standing at a table
mounted on his boat tied up at the co-op dock, getting a
fresh catch of oysters ready for market.
“Ya had breakfast yet?” he asks, as he deftly shucks three
oysters for his visitor. Despite a recent breakfast, the chance
to have oysters fresh out of the water is too good to pass up.
They are plump, juicy and very tasty.
“I eat them all the time,” Markow says. “They’re the best
oysters you can get!”
Markow is president of the small cooperative, which has
12 members, most of whom work part-time as oystermen,
and some who work only weekends. Some members operate
in Mystic Harbor; others from across Long Island sound on
Long Island.
The Noank co-op is developing a
reputation for a high-quality product,
and its oysters even have a distinctive
appearance, with radial ridges on their
shells. The co-op sells as many oysters
as it can grow. The only thing holding
it back from greater sales is production
limitations.
More production needed
Increasing production is a complicated
problem, and members are working
hard in anticipation of greater
returns in the future. Oysters are difficult
to breed and raise to the size at
which they can be set out in the beds
(see sidebar). They take three or four
years to grow to marketable size,
lengthening the time it takes to get a
decent return on investments of time
and money. And there are countless
variables that must be dealt with —
not only from year to year, but, most
importantly, from one part of the harbor
to another.
Steve Plant, another member of the
cooperative, says that the learning
curve is steep. “You’ve got to start slow
and go easy,” he says. “If I had known
what was in front of me …well, I guess
I would have gone ahead. Because you
have to go through the pain. If it were
easy, a lot of people would be doing it.”
“Every day I learn something new,”
says Plant. “Stuff you thought would
work like a charm fails completely, and
accidents sometimes work better than
anything. But once you’ve got everything
set, then you’ve got a cookbook.”
“You have to learn your area intimately,”
he says. That’s partly because
conditions are different from one part
of the estuary bottom to another.
Plant’s oyster beds are exposed to more
current than some of the other members’,
requiring him to grow his baby
oysters to a larger size before putting
them out. But he thinks the trade-off is
worth it, because with the current
comes more exposure to nutrients and
better flushing action to carry away
oyster waste.
Helping each other out
The cooperative is run informally
for the most part. “We get along with
each other and help each other out,”
says Plant. “I hope it stays that way.”
If one member is short on product
for a customer, other members will
loan him some of theirs, and members
often assist each other with repairs and
other activities. For the present, the
spirit of cooperation seems to make
things work, and the co-op officers and
bylaws can settle any disputes.
The co-op is set up as a fee-based
operation. Members are obliged to buy
oyster “seed” — baby oysters — from
the co-op, and to sell through the
organization.
Markow has been a waterman all his
life, and was a driving force behind the
founding of the co-op. He works full
time at his oyster business, along with
his business partner, Karen Rivara.
Together, he says, they have been able
to develop the business to the point
where it is profitable.
Plant’s background is not on the
water, but on Wall Street, where he
used to work as an analyst for a hedge
fund. Tiring of his routine, he looked
for a new career that would get him
out of the office. When his boss sent the fund staff out
to look for investment opportunities in commodities
production, he looked into aquaculture, and was attracted
by its possibilities. To start learning the business, he
got a job with a fish farm.
What he learned was not entirely encouraging. “I
found that not a lot of people make much money at
aquaculture. A lot of these ventures aren’t serious about
turning a real profit.”
While Plant was looking for a way to get an aquaculture
operation going, he ran into a friend who introduced
him to Markow, who was looking for recruits for
a new shellfish cooperative.
The cooperative got its start after Markow was
approached by Roger Sherman, a retired engineer from
the nearby submarine shipyard at New London.
Sherman, a volunteer with the Groton Shellfish
Commission, was interested in reviving commercial
shellfishing in the Mystic.
Vacated building offers home
Sherman learned that an old building in Noank, then
used by the University of Connecticut as a marine
research laboratory, was being vacated. Originally built
at the turn of the century as a lobster hatchery, the
building had two stories (a third story was blown off by a
hurricane in the 1920s). It had 6,000 square feet of space
and a 120-foot-long dock.
Sherman saw the old hatchery building as a terrific
opportunity. The Shellfish Commission not only leases
Mystic Harbor shellfish beds to commercial watermen,
but also maintains recreational shellfish beds in a nearby
cove, selling 2,000 recreational shellfishing permits a
year. Sherman figured that if the town could gain ownership of the building, it could lease it
for use as a hatchery to a shellfish business,
in return for oysters and clams to
stock the recreational beds. He contacted
Jim Markow, who expressed
immediate interest.
Markow believed that other watermen
in the area would be attracted to
the idea of a shellfish cooperative, and
the idea took off from there. Markow
began recruiting potential members
and Sherman went about obtaining the
rights to use the building.
The Commission put together a
proposal to turn the building
back into a hatchery and took it
to the chancellor of the university.
However, while the marine
scientists who had used the building
were enthusiastic about its
transformation into a shellfish
hatchery, the administration of
UConn was not. The university
wanted a financial return on the
building, which is located on
prime waterfront real estate. Half
a million dollars was the lowest
figure the university chancellor
was willing to entertain. It was
money the town just didn’t have.
The solution was a special
appropriation from the state legislature,
obtained by the town’s
state representative, and a statute
reserving the building for aquaculture
purposes. The university
was paid, ownership of the property
transferred to the state agriculture
department, and the
fledgling cooperative signed a
lease agreement. The upkeep and
maintenance of the building is overseen
by the Shellfish Commission,
which keeps office space on the second
floor.
In August 2002, then-Secretary of
Agriculture Ann Veneman presented
the state of Connecticut with a Rural
Business Enterprise Grant from USDA
Rural Development for $63,000 to
replace the roof and upgrade the interior.
The state is currently transferring
ownership of the building to the town
of Groton.
The co-op has another hatchery, as
well: on Long Island, run by Markow’s
partner, Rivara. Having two hatcheries
offers a fail-safe alternative if one
should be affected by disease or other
factors.
Sport fishermen feared impact
Some of the biggest hurdles for the
co-op were getting the necessary permits,
complicated by the fact that different
government entities have jurisdiction
over various aspects of the coop’s
operation. But one obstacle came
from an unexpected quarter.
“Our biggest opponents,” says
Plant, “Were the anglers.” Perhaps
influenced by unfavorable publicity
about salmon farming, local sport fishermen
were afraid that an oyster-growing
operation would somehow hurt
their fishing.
They needn’t have worried, says
Plant. “Oysters belong here,” he says.
“They used to grow wild here. We’re
just trying to restore old habitat for
them.” And in restoring oysters to the
harbor, co-op members believe they
are working for the return of other
estuarine wildlife that disappeared
years ago. A bumper sticker on Plant’s
car proclaims, “Oysters are Habitat
Forming.”
“People don’t want to change anything,”
says Plant, “But they don’t realize
it’s already changed. We’re changing
it back.”
Much of the reason oysters disappeared
from the Mystic River estuary,
according to Jim Markow, is that a
development boom along the shore
destroyed vegetation that filtered silt
from runoff water. Silt chokes oysters,
which need clean sand or gravel bottoms
to thrive.
But other conditions in the harbor
offered great potential, including
a healthy level of algae, which is the
food of oysters. “Look at that,” he
says, pointing to the water’s greenish
tinge. “See all that algae? That’s just
about perfect for raising oysters.”
Preparing the co-op’s oyster beds
has meant tediously dredging the
harbor bottom to clean off sediment.
With the return of oysters, Markow
says, conditions improve for other
estuarine wildlife that also left. He
points out that in other areas fishermen
seek out oyster beds because
they attract fish.
Plant says he’s seen evidence of
the beneficial effect of oysters for
fish around his nursery tank. “You
can see the little baby menhaden (a
commercial fish) hanging around
where the water comes out. They
wouldn’t be doing that if the oysters
didn’t put something they like into
the water.”
Markow says that there is a certain
amount of tension between the watermen
and the well-heeled outsiders who
have bought up most of the waterfront
property. He shakes his head. “These
guys are out here with their milliondollar
yachts, and they don’t like seeing
us because our boats are ugly.”
Good neighbors
But co-op members and others say
that most of the immediate neighbors
of the co-op are happy with it. “The
old-timers around here are all for the
operation,” says Roger Sherman.
“They understand that oysters help the
water quality.”
Co-op member Artie Valdez
believes in keeping the neighbors
happy. So, he recently took a day off to
clean up weeds and brush around the
building. “The local people have been
really helpful,” he told me. “We were
strangers at first, but we’ve gotten to
know and trust each other.”
Valdez grew up in the Groton area,
and says he has had a passion for the
outdoors and the water all his life.
After a term in the military, he
returned to the area in 1990 to settle
down. For a while he worked as a civilian
at the local naval base, but after the
unit in which he worked shut down in
1993, he tried commercial fishing,
starting a firm he named “Sweet Pea
Enterprises,” after his oldest niece’s
nickname. “I made ends meet, but not
much more,” he says.
In 1999, Valdez was talking to Jim
Markow and brought up the difficulty
of working on the water alone. The
two started working together, and
when the idea of a co-op came up, he
says, “I thought it was a great idea.”
Valdez especially likes the way coop
members support each other. “We
all offer to do stuff for each other,” he
says. “That’s the whole idea of a cooperative.
It’s a great feeling, working
together.”
Valdez says his operation is finally
starting to pay off. “It’s been a long
road,” he says, echoing Steve Plant’s
sentiments: “You never stop learning.”
He also hopes to be able to hire
more people and provide them with a
way to earn income. While he’s not
able to do that yet, he’s confident that,
with continued hard work, Sweet Pea
Enterprises and his fellow members’
businesses will continue to grow.
Breeding and growing oysters
— easy does it
Breeding oysters is a delicate task, says Stuart Mattison,
manager of the Noank Aquaculture Cooperative and head of
the co-op’s Noank hatchery. The conditions must be right
and, even then, success isn’t assured.
To ready adult oysters for breeding, they are put into flat
conditioning tanks, where they are kept for weeks at optimum
temperatures, bathed in clean water from the harbor
and fed algae. The algae — four different varieties — is
grown on the premises under controlled conditions.
Adults are then moved to another tank and the water temperature
is raised to about 80 degrees to encourage spawning.
Once one oyster begins spawning, the others, stimulated
by the hormones released, also spawn.
When spawning begins, the oysters are put into individual
plastic buckets, and the eggs and sperm they produce are
precisely mixed, with the goal of maximizing the number of
fertilized eggs. One female oyster can produce up to 30 million
eggs.
The oyster larvae are incubated, hatched and nurtured in
vertical tanks with conical bottoms, with a steady stream of
air bubbles and feedings of algae.
After a few weeks, the larvae are transferred to horizontal
trays to “set” — that is, to attach themselves to a bit of shell
or sand, and become sedentary. The trays have fine screen
bottoms covered with a thin layer of the sand, down through
which filtered harbor water is pumped.
