Troy Alphin, an ecologist at the Center for Marine Science on Masonboro Sound, believes North Carolina's shellfish aquaculture industry is primed to one day overtake states like Virginia – famous for its huge Chesapeake Bay harvests.
"North Carolina is realizing that we have better water quality than many of these other states up and down the east coast," Alphin said. "We've got a lot of coastline. We've got a lot of embayments suitable for growing oysters. So what we're seeing is these folks are moving back to this idea of growing oysters, and they're moving to an idea of growing them in a different way."
According to Alphin, over the past three to four decades many of the areas that were open to wild oyster harvests have been closed due to water quality concerns, often near the headwaters of creeks and rivers hit by pollutants from farms and industrial developments.
"You've got a lot of folks that harvest wild oysters, but the areas available for them to harvest those wild oysters are shrinking over time," Alphin said.
The trend, he said, shows a steep increase in the number of oyster farm leases all along the state's coastline, particularly in Pender and Onslow counties. And it is in Stump Sound – a shallow, mud-bottomed inlet long known for shellfish harvesting because of its location between the freshwaters of the New River and the salt waters of Topsail Inlet – where you see oyster farming on the rise.
A new generation, a growing market
On a recent cold winter day Evan Gadow and Mike Slaton took a flat-bottomed oyster boat to Permuda Island, a state-protected strip of land in the middle of Stump Sound, to prepare full grown oysters for the next day's harvest.
A year ago Gadow and his father Ryan moved from Raleigh to the coast to start Three Little Spats Oyster Company. With two leases on either side of Permuda Island totaling 39 acres – Gadow said that one has been leased out since the 1800s – they are already harvesting roughly 6,000 oysters a week.
While Gadow and Slaton waded through the shallow, murky water, raising cages from the muddy bottom to pick out oysters ready for harvest, they talked about their own role in helping revitalize a local industry decimated by declining wild oyster populations and a shrinking interest in commercial fishing.
"What we've heard from a lot of the watermen around here and Snead's Ferry in particular, is that the water used to be the backbone of the economy here," Gadow said. "People are now getting out of it, moving away, not really picking up where the old guard left off."
But according to Alphin, shellfish aquaculture like oyster farming is providing a way for traditional fishing families to return to the water, along with people moving to the coast to join the farm-to-table movement.
"Many want that 'back to the farm' experience, and they want to do it on the water, so shellfish aquaculture is a way of doing that," Alphin said.
The Gadows believe the Wilmington market could some day rival Charleston's, and when that happens, they want their Permuda Island Selects to be the city's flagship oyster.
"Charleston has a serious oyster market, because they have beautiful wetlands. Here we have the same, just not the same market," Gadow said. "I believe we can turn Wilmington into an oyster destination that Charleston has become."
Slaton, a chef at Boca Bay Restaurant and Bar in Wilmington before he came to work for the Gadows, said that day is approaching.
"I think it's starting to happen. People are upping their orders, there's more interest in local agriculture, local food, local oysters," Slaton said.
During his restaurant days he would see most of the oysters come in from the large farms in Chesapeake Bay, and believes the demand exists for year-round, locally harvested oysters.
"It was rare to see a North Carolina oyster. You get your wilds in the cold months, but as far as a farm-raised oyster that you could eat all year long, we didn't have a supply," Slaton said.
Roughly three-quarters of the new company's production comes from triploid oysters – which unlike diploids do not reproduce, and therefore don't expend the energy required of diploids during their spawning process. This keeps them at a size ready for harvest, and allows Three Little Spats to supply oysters year-round.
"So you can have an oyster roast anytime of the year," Gadow said.
His father Ryan said that a growing movement is afoot to relax regulations for ocean farmers.
"The stakeholders getting involved in this industry are trying to push through some legislation that's going to make it better, easier, for people to farm, and help us compete with Maryland, Virginia, and other states," Ryan said.
And he believes aquaculture will become more and more important as a global food source in the years to come.
"Because we're depleting our resources, aquaculture needs to be taken very seriously," Ryan Gadow said. "We gotta feed this planet."
"When the weather changes I like to crack one open and see how it changed the taste profile. In the winter they get a little sweeter and in the summer they get more salty. Stump Sound is just a perfect place to grow oysters. It has a lot to do with fresh water meeting the salty water in this particular area. You get all those notes – salt, butter, umami. You get the savor of sweet and salty. It's a really well balanced flavor." Evan Gadow | Co-founder, Three Little Spats Oyster Co.
Rebounding from Florence
Ryan Gadow said that while Hurricane Florence devastated the North Carolina oyster industry, their farm's protected location in the middle of Stump Sound minimized their losses: they lost roughly 40,000 oysters out of a half million total.
Others in Stump Sound were not as fortunate.
Joe Facendola, a biologist with the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF) , said both wild oyster beds and farms in the area were hit hard by the hurricane.
"We have reports of significant oyster mortality in Stump Sound, and are currently sampling there for our annual spat (juvenile oyster) evaluation," Facendola said. "Impacts to hand harvest fishermen vary across the coast, with areas such as Stump Sound reporting greater losses."
Alphin thinks future harvests should be the industry's main concern. During Florence, high currents scattered the spats -- or oyster seeds -- and they were also exposed to low salinity levels because of the sound's huge intake of freshwater.
"So the concern here is – although they may have lost a significant amount of oysters that they had ready to sell now, what about the ones they were going to sell next year? It's all the small seed oysters they had out that will be the problem – the next generation's product, next year's product – that we need to be concerned about," Alphin said.
Where Alphin and his team were able to sample oyster populations after Florence in the Cape Fear region, he said many sites lost about 80 percent of their population while others lost about 40 percent.
Evan Gadow sees a stabilizing role of farmers when the industry encounters rough times – as it did often last year with record rains followed by the September hurricane. Because they are protected in cages weighted into the mud, farmed oysters are not as exposed to the elements like a wild oyster bed is.
But Ryan Gadow said they are still fighting the notion that North Carolina seafood is unsafe to eat because of the pollutants that entered the waters after the hurricane. To fight what he calls a misperception, he urged oyster-lovers to consider that routine tests from the DMF's Shellfish Sanitation Department would not allow for unhealthy oysters.
"Second of all, we don't want to devastate the industry any further by making somebody sick," Ryan Gadow said.
For those in the area who lost their jobs because of Florence, or who have left the fishing industry altogether, Slaton said the rise of oyster farms will bring significant employment opportunities.
He also pointed to the positive impact the farms have on the environment. As filter feeders oysters enhance water quality, he said, and the cages create habitats for other organisms to live and feed off of.
"Hopefully this industry will come back," Slaton said. "We hear from the local guys all the time – there used to be 25 shrimp boats out here, now there are two. But we feel welcomed by the older natives, who don't think we're just young guys trying to cash in on this. They come out to see how we do it, and appreciate what we're doing to help bring the industry back."
"That really speaks to the virtue of these guys; they just want to see the area succeed," Evan Gadow said as they dropped the cage back into the water.
Credits:
(Port City Daily photos/Mark Darrough)