How to Start an Oyster Farm

An oyster farmer lays out the steps and considerations for how to start an oyster farm and how to farm oysters so that you too can join this aquaculture movement.

Before learning how to start an oyster farm, you should know two things.

First, oyster farming has tremendous upsides, and you’ll love your job. Your commute to work will be a boat ride, your office the great outdoors. It can be lucrative. You can buy an oyster seed for about a nickel, and perhaps 18 months later, sell that same mollusk for 60 cents. And the business is beneficial to the environment. Oysters are filter feeders, and as they eat plankton, they remove damaging nitrogen in the water. Put a lot of oysters in a concentrated area, and they’ll keep the waters there clean.

Second, oyster farming also has downsides, and you’ll hate your job. Boats will break down, and your bivalves will be subject to disease, storms, and predators. Unforeseen circumstances will arise, which shut down restaurants, the primary users of cultivated oysters. The work is repetitive and physically hard, the water gets cold, and you’ll damn the December day you have to shovel snow from your boat. And oyster shells are razor-sharp. Sometimes you’ll bleed.

Historically, oyster lovers everywhere ate from the wild. Aficionados had ready access to teeming beds of shellfish to forage. Now, almost all oysters eaten by consumers have been farm-raised. The reality is bleak: More than 85% of the world's wild oyster reefs have been lost, the reasons for this threefold: higher water temperatures due to climate change causing increased ocean acidity; a pair of diseases, dermo and MSX, negatively affecting the breathing capabilities of oysters; and overfishing. By 1990, many wild populations had disappeared.

A proliferation of farms in U.S. coastal areas (Massachusetts presently has 371) raise Crassostrea virginica. This includes our own farm, the Crooked River Shellfish Farm, located in Wareham, Massachusetts. Beginning in 2017, we sought approval from local, state, and federal agencies. Then, we bought gear, a boat, and nearly 200,000 tiny oysters. We became part of the aquaculture movement, the world's fastest-growing food-production method.

The process of starting a business farming oysters begins with a tidal wave of red tape. Coastal sites need approval, and the maze you must find your way through is daunting. Our first step involved meeting with the harbormaster to discuss farming opportunities along our 50 miles of shoreline. Five such operations already existed, but there was still acreage available. We developed a five-year plan and proposed it to the board of selectmen. Once their approval was secured, the Division of Marine Fisheries weighed in, including a scuba survey of the sea bottom to determine if eel grass (beneficial to a variety of species) was prevalent and whether existing shellfish there should be left for recreational diggers. I also filed paperwork with the local conservation commission, with its eye on endangered-species impacts. I notified abutters and two Native American tribes. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers determined whether the proposed site would interfere with navigational traffic. This nightmare of forms, fees, and frustration took one year. At the end, I leased 6.8 acres of ocean at the annual rate of $25 per acre.

Generally, oyster farmers use one of four methods to raise oysters, and the neophyte must decide on the best option. I was fortunate enough to enter into my endeavor with a business partner who had experience within the oyster industry. I relied on him to make such decisions.

Farmers can place oysters on the substrate in free-range fashion, known as "bottom culture."

Oysters are retained in bags fastened to metal racks a distance above the seafloor. With these systems, the oysters are near the shoreline, fully submerged at high tide,and fully exposed at low tide.

Oysters hang below the surface 24/7.

Oysters are kept floating on the surface in mesh bags. When Crooked River was established, we used a longline culture system of floating bags.

Choosing a method involves weighing pros and cons. Bottom-cultured oysters are vulnerable to predators in a way floating oysters aren't. Crabs, for example, can make advances on the free meal. And if the seafloor is muddy, oysters can get lost and smothered in a thick slop. But minerals in the substrate produce robust and hearty shells when oysters are in contact with the bottom. By contrast, the shells of oysters raised in floats can be brittle and thin.

Then, there's the matter of cost. Bottom-cultured oysters preclude the necessity of purchasing expensive gear. And you’ll have other considerations. Do your town regulations allow for floating gear? Does your site have sufficient depth to consider a suspended system? (Oysters that are in water 24/7 grow fast.)

Then, consider tumbling oysters. Oysters shaken by waves or human hands will grow deep cups. Restaurants prefer deep-cupped oysters, as these cups retain the oyster and liquid within the shell, thus preserving taste and enhancing their briny presentation. Oysters in floating bags receive natural tumbling in the form of waves. Therefore, the farmer doesn't need to shake them.

So, you have a siten and you’ve decided on a growth method. Now, amass your gear. When Crooked River got going, our startup costs were approximately $40,000 (my partner and I split everything 50-50). We bought a used 16-foot Carolina Skiff. This boat had a flat bottom conducive to standing, working, and hauling oysters and gear. We bought hundreds of mesh bags and cylindrical floats, assembling them by hand on a homemade jig with hog rings. At our site, we set up floating rope lines held in place at each end with helical anchors. These lines gave us parking spaces for the floating bags. By April, we’d placed our first order for hatchery-produced oyster spat. The size of your pinky fingernail, they’ll be iced and transported from a state-approved hatchery to your farm and dispersed into bags by volume. Saleable oysters must achieve a 2-1/2-inch length, and the faster you reach this goal, the sooner you’ll profit. Spawning oysters in a hatchery is part science, part alchemy. The induced spawning and manipulation of genetics in these labs can produce oysters that are more interested in eating than in reproduction, and that are more resistant to disease. Promotion of the urge to eat results in faster growth.

Now, you’re in business, and the real work begins. At first, each small mesh bag will hold perhaps 1,000 oysters. As they grow, nourishing themselves on plankton, they’ll need to be relayed into larger mesh bags with fewer oysters in each bag. Bigger oysters will out-eat little oysters, so you’ll have to cull and disperse accordingly. Haul in a bag, empty it on a table, cull, scrape the oysters if Crepidula (slipper shells) have adhered, clean the biofoul from the mesh, and then redeploy as efficiently as you can. This is a constant process, and as long as you have oysters, it’ll never end. Frugal farmers do all of this manually. The big dogs, established farmers with deep pockets, invest in the mechanical ability to cull.

Flip the floating bags for effective growing. Bag bottoms can become so biofouled that they restrict water flow, causing the oyster's menu options to wane. So, we walk along our rows and turn bags over, exposing sea muck to the sun so anything living will dry out and die. One week later, we’ll do it all again. Then again, and again, and again.

When an oyster eats, inhaling seawater, it also takes in damaging nitrogen that would result in the loss of critical habitat for other species. Thus, when thousands of these bivalves exist in a specific area, those bodies of water stay pristine. One oyster can filter 50 gallons of seawater each day.

Though we understood it would take 1-1/2 to 2 years before our 5/8-inch oysters would reach saleable size, we sold our first few hundred just nine months later. We attributed this pleasant surprise to geography (our location had a good southwestern fetch), diligent maintenance, and dumb luck. Oysters sell in bags of 50 or 100 hand-counts, tagged in accordance with food-safety regulations. Oyster farmers, unless they have licenses beyond a standard commercial license, sell to wholesalers. Selling directly to retailers or any private party is illegal. And during certain months, oysters must be iced within established timelines to minimize the chances of the humans who eat them contracting vibriosis, an infection with ugly symptoms that in rare cases can be fatal.

Many farmers submerge their crops for winter and go home. In late November, we remove the floats, fill each bag three-fourths full with oysters, strap the bags to sections of aluminum ladders we retrieved from the town dump, and then haul them offshore in water at least 3 feet deep. This minimum depth prevents heavy ice from crushing our oysters. Aluminum ladders allow water flow underneath the submerged oysters. The technique is primitive, but it works. While modern approaches — such as OysterGro systems — represent much less annual labor (not to mention unnecessary dumpster-diving), such a system requires significantly more money.

Oysters aren't voracious eaters in winter. They go dormant and "clam up" until water temperatures rise in spring. Some hearty farmers work 12 months each year, risking storm and ice damage to their oysters and hypothermic damage to themselves. Many year-rounders have land access to their sites. Our farm is accessed only by boat, and the harbor can ice up severely. Plus, the oysters’ growth rate slows. So, we sink them and skedaddle, done in mid-December, and we hibernate for the next three months.

We established our business as an LLC, affording us some financial protection for the long haul. LLCs keep the business value separate from personal assets, so renewing our LLC became an annual exercise of importance. Winter was also a good time to repair damaged gear.

We bought more oysters and gear in our second year, putting in play a population that would replace our initial crop once sold. The growth rates remained impressive, and we sold 1,000 to 3,000 per week. We repeated this pattern in our third year, and by midpoint that season, we fully recovered all startup costs and operated in the black. We now run the farm on "house money," no longer reaching into our own wallets to pay the bills.

So if oceanic acreage is available and you feel ambitious, don't worry too much about the downsides. We’ve had to get towed because our boat broke down. We’ve spilled hundreds of oysters on the bottom through carelessness and equipment failure. We’ve had to shoo people from our farm. One day, I fell overboard. And no matter how much money you spend on waders, they’ll leak.

Rather, focus on the upsides. I wear a bathing suit to work on balmy days. I have no boss; I’m driven by weather and tides rather than hierarchy. You’ll encounter problems, but in the scheme of things, how difficult is it to deter ospreys from building nests on your gear? Farm-raising oysters keeps you in intimate touch with the natural world. It's hard work, but when done in earnest, it's its own reward.

After a 35-year career in education, David Paling retired to become a full-time oyster farmer. He's a freelance writer, and his nonfiction has appeared in more than 100 regional and national publications.