Humans have loved oysters for millennia, even more than clams, middens of which dot Islesboro’s shores.
No shellfish midden beats the one in Damariscotta where Route 1 crosses the river and you see floating pontoons for oyster-raising bags. The Penobscot people gathered here to feast on oysters, conduct diplomacy, and even arrange marriages. (Notes on a Lost Flute by Kerry Hardy describes this beautifully.) They devoured so many oysters here 1,000 to 2,200 years ago that the heaps of shells they left were heavily mined in the 1880s to make lime and to add to chicken feed. You can visit a small state park called Whaleback Shell Midden State Historic Site to see the midden up close.
Now, oysters growing in the Damariscotta estuary are so plentiful and famous that the Maine Aquaculture Association picked it as the place to teach a bunch of us food writers and food service people and others not just about oysters—how to grow, eat, and spread the word about them—but also other types of sea farms along Maine’s coast growing fin fish, scallops, mussels, seed oysters, clams, and seaweed.
Islesboro, where I live, has oyster and mussel farms, both of which are typical of Maine aquaculture.
Not that long ago, my niece worked for the Conovers’ Islesboro Marine Enterprises, coming home sometimes with mussels stripped off mooring lines—sweet, fat, and unlike some we used to gather along the shore, they had no pearls. Perhaps that suggested a mussel farm was a no-brainer; Shey and Josh established one, and they now process the shellfish for selling locally and shipping out of state.
Islesboro Oyster Co., run in Broad Cove by island native Kim Grindle, sports an honor-system farm stand, sells at the island’s farmers’ market and out of a mobile shucking truck, and distributes widely on the mainland. Soon she’ll have bay scallops.
They both offer tours. They both have faced objections from people whose view encompassed their sea farms—a version of NIMBYism, not in a backyard but rather “not in my water view,” or NIMWV. Mind you, people who object might very well like eating mussels or oysters.
As we drifted down the Damariscotta River on the tour boat, we passed many waterfront cottages with generous views of floating oyster equipment, buoys, and work floats with people sorting and packing oysters to be taken ashore. I imagined those homeowners may have originally envisioned a broad expanse of calm water with seabirds swooping in and out.
Aquaculture operations navigate a fairly involved process for leasing, which can be a bottleneck for prospective sea farmers.
Sea farmers are currently leasing 214 standard and experimental sites in Maine, with a median size of 5.23 acres, according to industry data. There are also about 800 “limited purpose” aquaculture sites, which provide leaseholders up to 400 square feet to test the viability of a site for up to a year. Perhaps they are the experimental harbingers of more sea farming to come.
There we were, being plied with drinkables and raw oysters freshly pried open. (I like my seafood cooked so sampled smoked oysters, mussels, and salmon.) I thought about all the phytoplankton being filtered out of the water by millions of oysters all around me. Seeing how the estuary’s tides flush the beds and anyway oysters naturally grow in clusters, I fretted less about oyster or mussel monoculture than other types of monoculture. I marveled at sea-farmed scallops, and wondered if I ever would become fond of seaweed.
Sandy Oliver is a food historian who gardens, cooks, and writes on Islesboro. She may be contacted at SandyOliver47@gmail.com.
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