Specialized Gear, Hard Work
By Bonnie Phillips / ecoRI News staff
This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center.
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| Crew members Peter Muhitch, left, and Patrick Mitchell, haul an oyster cage aboard the boat. (Bonnie Phillips/ecoRI News) |
Russ Blank bent over the side of his
boat and, using a grapple hook, pulled up a heavy rope line attached to an
oyster cage, one in a long line of cages floating in the West Passage of
Narragansett Bay.
The line barely looked like rope; it was covered with seaweed and other stringy oceanic growth after sitting in the bay for months.
Blank’s two crew members out with him that September day, Peter Muhitch and Patrick Mitchell, used the hook to help wrestle the cage onto the side of the boat, balancing it on the edge between the cage’s two pontoon floats so it sat level. They then unhooked the cage’s closures and, one by one, emptied six mesh bags full of oysters into blue bins lined up on the boat. Empty, the cages weigh about 50 pounds; fully loaded with the bags of oysters and bogged down with algae and other aquatic growth, they can weigh between 200 and 300 pounds.
To harvest the oysters, each cage must be hooked and pulled
onto the boat individually and the mesh bags emptied of oysters. The cage is
then returned to the bay and the next cage pulled up and emptied, over and
over. At this particular location of his Rome
Point Oyster Co., Blank has 504 cages to check, empty, and refill during
the oyster growing season. Each cage fills four to six blue bins with oysters,
and the crew empties 10 to 20 cages a day.
It’s not an easy job.
Oyster health and growth
Eastern oysters make up most of Rhode Island’s aquaculture
industry crop, which generates roughly $7 million to $8 million annually,
alongside hard-shell clams, mussels, and kelp.
Farm-gate aquaculture sales — what the farmer receives for
the product — was valued at around $8 million in 2024, according to the Coastal Resources Management Council. The industry supports
dozens of active commercial farms across roughly 370 acres of state waters.
When oyster lovers slurp up one of the delicious bites —
which can taste salty, briny, or sweet, depending on the time of year they’re
eaten and where they were grown — they seldom think of all the effort that goes
into bringing the treat to the table.
There are many steps along the way between a baby oyster and
the luscious, salty bite on the half-shell that makes Rhode Island oysters so
prized. This story, part of a three-part series on aquaculture in Rhode Island,
will look at the gear oyster farmers use.
There are three common ways oysters can be harvested: from
bottom cages which, as described, sit at the bottom of the water attached to
buoys; from surface cages, like the ones that Blank and his crew harvested in
the bay; and from a new type of floating basket system called a FlipFarm.
The success of each type of gear depends on many things: the type of waterbody; the age of the oysters; the quality of the water; and the amount of oxygen and food, said Jacqueline Rosa, a biological science laboratory technician at the USDA Agricultural Research Service in Rhode Island. Rosa, who received her master’s in chemical oceanography from the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography, studied for her master’s thesis how water quality and farming practices impact the oysters in the lower West Passage of Narragansett Bay, an area that hosts 48 acres of oyster farms, including Blank’s.
Rosa’s 18-month study published this year, funded by a grant from the
Partnership for Research Excellence in Sustainable Seafood (PRESS) through
Rhode Island Sea Grant, found that young oysters raised in floating gear
survived at roughly three times the rate of those grown in cages on the bottom.
The study also found that the FlipFarm, the less labor-intensive basket system,
produced oysters just as healthy as traditional surface cages.
Oysters are voracious eaters, dining on phytoplankton or
small bits of algae suspended in the water. They are filter feeders,
which means they obtain their food by filtering water in and over their
gills. Whatever they can’t eat or digest, they expel as feces. Adult oysters
can filter up to 50 gallons of water daily and are capable of pumping and
straining up to 2 gallons of water an hour.
In July 2025, Rosa deployed 2,700 juvenile oysters from a
Virginia-based hatchery, each about 16 millimeters long, at Blank’s Rome Point
oyster farm, splitting them among traditional surface cages, bottom cages, and FlipFarm cages. Over
six months, she tracked how many survived, how fast they grew, and how much
energy they had available for growth.
“We wanted to better understand the differences in oyster
health and growth in the different gear types,” Rosa said.
The gap in survival was stark. About 86% of oysters in
FlipFarm baskets and 77% in traditional surface cages survived, a difference
the study found wasn’t statistically significant. In the bottom cages, however,
just 27% made it. Growth in the oysters’shell and tissue were largely similar
across all three gear types, Rosa found.
Rosa attributed most of the bottom-gear losses to Atlantic
oyster drills, predatory snails that bore through shells, which she saw during
sampling trips and which farmers say they regularly find in bottom cages.
‘A lot of hours’
Blank, who has been farming oysters with his brother Bill at
Rome Point since 2001, wasn’t surprised by the study’s findings. He and other
farmers told Rosa they generally don’t put seed oysters in bottom cages,
instead reserving the cages for larger oysters that are nearing market size,
when the bivalves are better able to withstand the predators and low oxygen
levels found at the bottom of the bay.
Blank’s surface cages float offshore near their namesake,
Rome Point Cove, within view of the Jamestown Bridge. Each day from spring
through early winter, in addition to emptying a number of cages, he and his
crew flip other cages to avoid what’s known biofouling, the buildup of algae,
barnacles, mussels, and other organisms that can choke off water flow and food.
Traditional surface cages must be flipped by hand, one at a time, so the
oysters and gear are cleaned by the air and sun when the cage is flipped to sit
above the water. During Rosa’s study, those cages were flipped every two to
four weeks for a day or two at a time. Bottom cages are more work still: they
must be hauled ashore to be dried, pressure washed, or soaked in brine.
“It takes a lot of hours to grow an oyster,” Blank said.
Surface cages allow oysters to grow in the relatively warm
upper water column, where the food supply is typically higher. Therefore,
oysters grown in suspended gear typically reach market size in three to four
years, compared with five to eight years on the bottom.
As Blank and his crew pulled the cages onto the boat, the
scrape of the detritus stuck to the cages could be heard over the boat’s idling
motor. It takes about three weeks, he said, for the cages to get “fouled up”
again after being flipped.
...and pour the oysters into blue
bins. (Bonnie Phillips/ecoRI News)
Blank’s surface cages are arranged in rows of 12 by the size
of the oysters inside. The empty cages he merely flipped; the others were
stripped of their oysters, to be sorted by size at a special platform he’d
built and anchored near the farm.
Blank, Mitchell, and Muritch, all clad in Grundens waders,
worked side by side under the warm, early September sun in a kind of dance:
lean over; snag the cage with the grapple hook; pull it onto the side of the
boat; open the cages; clip the zip ties holding the mesh bags closed; dump the
oysters into the bins; stack the empty bags on one side of the boat; push the
cage back into the water; stack the full bins at the front of the boat; line up
the empty bins; pull another cage; rinse and repeat.
There was just enough room on the deck of the 25-foot boat
for the three men to fit, between the cages, bags, and blue bins holding the
oysters. Sometimes they joked “money cage!” when a particularly heavy cage was
pulled up.
Each line of 12 cages is anchored on each end to a 200-pound
mooring, and that day one of the mooring lines had come loose. Using the boat’s
crane-like davit hauler and snatch block, Blank pulled up the mooring and saw
that a welded eye used to hold the rope had come undone. “We can fix it,” he
said, maneuvering his boat over to another mooring, hauling that aboard, and
replacing the broken mooring.
“We do a lot of on-the-water repairs,” he said wryly, using
a clove hitch knot to retie the rope with the buoy to the replacement mooring
before sinking it back into the water.
Blank keeps a color-coded spreadsheet on his phone in which
he logs which cages have been flipped, which have been emptied, and the number
and size of the oysters inside, among other data, typing in the information
with large hands roughened by time and hard work.
Once all the blue bins on the boat were filled with oysters,
Blank motored over to the special sorting platform he’d built with a friend. In
addition to extra mesh bags and blue bins, a sorting table, and other gear, the
platform held a cylindrical metal tube with holes of various sizes. A small
conveyor belt ferried the oysters into the tube, where they rattled around
until they fell through the corresponding hole sizes. Some of the oysters were
large enough to bring to market; others were repacked into mesh bags and placed
back in the water to continue to grow.
Blank explained that rougher water and stronger currents
make the oyster shells bigger and tougher by tumbling the oysters around. The
larger the shell grows, the bigger the oyster within it can get.
“So as that oyster is trying to grow, it keeps breaking that
new growth off. You see the white ring on that?” he asked, pointing to an
oyster he’d plucked from the water. “That’s all the new growth coming on
there.”
An oyster with a deep “cup,” Blank said, is more appealing
and easier to shuck than one that’s flatter. Deep cups also hold the “liquor,”
the brine inside the shell, better.
The deeper the cup, the curve at
the bottom of the oyster, the better the oyster. (Bonnie Phillips/ecoRI News)
“You see how these are shaping up round? They’re getting the
cups coming down on them,” Blank added.
The FlipFarm cages, he said, are especially good for shaping
deep cups because they can be placed in areas with a stronger current.
“These things get pounded,” Blank said after motoring over
to his FlipFarm setup, in a section of the West Passage slightly north of his
surface cages. “That’s because as they’re bouncing around in these cages.”
Measured by shell length from the hinge to the tip, oysters
are categorized in sizes such as cocktail (2.5-3 inches), market (3.5-4
inches), and large (4-5 inches). Half-shell buyers usually like oysters in the
market range, while larger oysters are often used for cooked dishes.
The market dictates what oyster sizes are popular, and
tastes change over time, Blank said. Currently, bigger is better.
The market “went through a phase they only wanted the small”
oysters, he said. “Now they’re coming back to where they want big” ones.
FlipFarm gear offers a number of pluses, said Blank, who has
had his setup for about three years. The baskets are strung in a long chain on
a single line anchored at each end. In his case, Blank has 2,100 FlipFarm
baskets.
The main advantage to FlipFarm gear is the speed with which
the baskets can be turned over. Because they’re smaller than traditional
surface cages, with smaller floats attached, special gear that can be mounted
on the boat flips
them mechanically as the vessel moves down the row of baskets. Local farmers
told Rosa an entire line can be rotated in a fraction of the time it takes to
flip a row of traditional cages. The manufacturer claims the design can cut
labor by as much as 60%.
“You drive right down, flipping each cage. They flip this
whole line in two minutes,” Blank said.
Both flipping the cages to prevent biofouling and harvesting
the oysters is much faster using the FlipFarm, Blank said. But that comes at a
price, with the setup costing about $10,000 per row, he said, and the flipping
attachment costs about $10,000 as well.
Rosa’s study found that oysters harvested from FlipFarm gear
grew larger and sturdier shells on average.
“The oysters that grew in the FlipFarm gear, because they’re
experiencing that consistent wave action, were much rounder, more of a teardrop
shape,” she said. “Some people prefer a smaller, more round oyster, some people
prefer an oyster that’s larger because it is likely to have larger meat. So
there’s also that component of the farmer choosing how they want their oyster
to look based on the consumer preferences.”
The FlipFarm system flips oyster cages in a much less
labor-intensive way. (Russ Blank)
The system has had some growing pains. After an earlier
version was installed at Rome Point in 2023, a few baskets broke loose from the
main line during rougher weather, Rosa found in her study. A rivet connecting
each basket to the steel line proved to be the weak point, and the manufacturer
reinforced it. No gear losses have been reported since the updated version went
in, her study found.
Rosa cautioned that conditions vary across the bay,
especially near its mouth where tides are stronger, so gear that works well at
one farm might not work as well at a different location.
‘Keeping the peace’
The FlipFarm setup could prove popular with oyster farmers
for another reason, as well: it’s less visible from shore.
As long as there have been aquaculture farms in the Ocean
State, there’s been a push-pull between the farmers and the residents who live
near or play on the water. Opponents of aquaculture farming say the equipment
gets in the way of recreation and can ruin the views of homeowners who pay high
prices to live on or near the water.
“Everybody has a connection to Rhode Island’s bodies of
waters, right?” said Rob Hudson, a marine associate and aquaculture expert at
the University of Rhode Island’s Coastal Resources Center, who teaches a course on the
business of aquaculture at URI’s Narragansett Bay campus.
“NIMBYism is a problem, you know, but if you poll those same
people, they want fresh seafood, they just don’t want it in front of their
house,” he said.
Part of the course teaches aquaculture farmers how to start
communicating with homeowners and others prior to filing an application that
could pave the way to farm acceptance. He said presenters in his course
discussed some basic strategies to help farmers start those conversations with
stakeholders.
“In Rhode Island, you’re probably paying a very premium price for that coastal home. So I totally understand that aspect of it, but keeping the peace, opening that dialogue, it’s just two-way communication,” Hudson said.
The idea for the course stemmed partially from misunderstandings surrounding the industry, which leads to
pushback when farmers apply for leases in local waters. One such example is the
case of John and Patrick Bowen of Tiverton, who in 2020 sought permission from
CRMC, which oversees aquaculture permit applications and holds public hearings,
to install up to 200 oyster cages in an area totaling less than an acre 285
feet offshore in the Sakonnet River. The proposal, which would have sited the
brothers’ farm close to Sapowet Marsh, a state-managed area in Tiverton, set
off years of opposition from anglers, residents, and others who said it would
interfere with other uses of the water. A CRMC hearing officer in August ruled that the application could be considered by the
agency.
Another contentious aquaculture application took six years
to wind through the system. After two public hearings and one appeal to Rhode
Island Superior Court, CRMC in 2023 approved a new half-acre oyster farm just off Nayatt Point
in Barrington.
The site is one of the only aquaculture farms to be located
in upper Narragansett Bay. The area is classified as a Conditionally Approved Area by the Department of
Environmental Management, which indicates areas that are particularly
vulnerable to bacteria colonies after heavy rains and stormwater runoff.
Blank said he’s had complaints from a homeowner whose
property overlooks his Rome Point farm, even though the property is near a
popular preserve which features signs explaining what the farmers do with the
oyster gear visible from the shore.
“The water has a lot of user groups; it’s for everybody,” he
said.
Spat
On the way back into Wickford Harbor, Blank stopped at his
bottom cages, located just outside the harbor. These 500 cages, sitting on the
bay floor and marked by buoys, must be loaded and handled differently, he
explained.
The oysters “have to be laid out flat” in the bags in the
bottom cages, he said. If they are all squashed together at one end, they won’t
survive and grow, instead being choked out by sediment from the bottom or
falling victim to predators.
In the winter, when the weather is too rough to work at his
other two locations, Blank said, he works with the bottom cages.
As he pulled up to the dock at Wickford Harbor and tied his
boat off, he pointed out the sound of a motor running. “Do you hear that?” he
asked.
Then he walked along the dock and tugged on a hook, pulling
open a section of the walkway to reveal tubs of baby oysters bubbling in water
recirculated by pumps under the dock.
These are his young oysters, he explained, which he gets mainly from a Virginia-based hatchery, although he also gets some from a hatchery in Maine. He said he likes to test out the hatcheries to find the ones that produce the most reliable young.
Young oysters start out as free-swimming larvae. Their life
cycle begins when warming spring or summer water temperatures, usually above
68°, tells mature oysters to spawn. (Oysters are sequential hermaphrodites and
can change their sex during their lives.) When a male releases sperm into the
water, it triggers nearby oysters to release millions of eggs and sperm.
Fertilization happens in the open water column, and the
fertilized eggs rapidly develop through microscopic, free-swimming phases that
drift with the water currents for about three weeks. In the earliest stage, the
larvae use hair-like cilia to move. They then develop a primitive shell and a
specialized organ to allow them to swim and feed on phytoplankton. The next
stage includes developing a sort of muscular foot and an eye to search for a
hard surface on which to cement itself as it builds a protective shell. These
are known as spat, and that’s what Blank was proudly showing off under the
Wickford dock.
Once they’re big enough, the spat are seeded in smaller-mesh
bags and placed into cages, where they are tended and eat and grow until they
are the right size to end up on someone’s plate.
Blank is bullish about the future of oyster farming in the
state, and said he’d like to expand his FlipFarm operation one day. He’d have
to apply to the CRMC first for a gear modification, he said.
“Trust me, I’ve already been thinking about that,” he said.