Economic mussel
By Colleen Cronin / ecoRI News staff
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| Workers at American Mussel Harvesters process freshly farmed mussels. (Colleen Cronin/ecoRI News) |
The sound of thousands of mussels moving on conveyor belts and clanking through sorting machines almost drowned out Greg Silkes as he tried to explain how the shellfish get from the ocean, through the processing plant, to plates around North America.
Silkes
is the general manager American Mussel Harvesters, one of the largest mussel
producers in North America, and he helps run the business along with his father
and other family members. On Wednesday, the Silkes and America’s Seafood
Campaign hosted U.S. Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), and other officials and seafood
stakeholders at their location in North Kingstown to discuss the
shellfish-farming industry and its importance to public health, the economy,
and reducing carbon emissions.
American
Mussel Harvesters has been around since 1986 and has grown from
a small operation with one boat and one phone to a large enterprise that ships
mussels, clams, and oysters around the country.
Rather
than fishing from pockets of naturally occurring shellfish on the seafloor, American
Mussel Harvesters grow their product from tiny seeds in lots in the ocean. Greg
Silkes said that a bag about the size of a shoe box can store millions of
itty-bitty shellfish.
Overall,
it takes about two to four years to get the shellfish from seed to table, but,
depending on the maturity of the seeds American Mussel Harvesters buys, it
usually takes six to eight months to grow and process their product and get it
on the market.
As
workers sorted the mussels into different grades, packed them into netted bags,
and placed them in boxes filled with ice, Silkes said the shipment would be
headed to a nearby Market Basket.
In
the last two years the business model has shifted away from restaurants and
toward retail because of the pandemic, Silkes said, and they’ve automated more
of their processing plant to accommodate that change.
Still,
American Mussel Harvesters does sell to local restaurants. “I love going to eat
and saying this is my product,” Silkes said.
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| U.S. Sen. Jack Reed prepares to eat an oyster he just shucked, as Mason Silkes of American Mussel Harvesters looks on. (Colleen Cronin/ecoRI News) |
Bill
Silkes, the owner and founder of American Mussel Harvesters, started off the
discussion thanking Reed for his work to promote shellfish farming in Rhode
Island. “Under your watch,” Rhode Island’s gone from zero to more than 40
farms, Silkes told the senator.
Reed
noted that it’s an important industry “not just to Rhode Island, but to the
entire nation.”
According
to the Commercial Fisheries Research
Foundation, in R.I., the fisheries and seafood sector — which
includes commercial fishing and shellfishing, fishing charters, processing,
professional service firms, retail and wholesale seafood dealers — consists of
428 firms that generated 3,147 jobs and $538.33 million of gross sales in 2016.
Including spillover effects across all sectors of the R.I. economy, the total
economic impact was 4,381 jobs and an output of $419.83 million. The Port of
Galilee alone hosts 240 fishermen that bring in 48 million pounds of seafood
annually.
As
the industry continues to grow, Bill Silkes said, a lack of dock space and
growing space will impact local businesses. Indicating the vessel hosting the
round-table talk, Silkes said it had already been kicked out of a slip once to
accommodate a yacht.
He
also noted efforts to start moving farming into federal waters, something that
has made more progress in the last few months than in previous years.
“The
opportunity is enormous,” he said.
Assistant
administrator for NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service Janet Coit said she’s
been working to get aquaculture out of state waters and that part of the
challenge is that permitting will involve several different groups.
Coit,
the former DEM director, said she sees the “same issues” federally in getting
farms up and running as there were in Rhode Island, “just at a different
scale.”
Bob Ballou, assistant to the director of DEM, talked about RI Seafood, the state-run marketing campaign designed to get more Rhode Islanders eating local catch.
Ballou
said the campaign not only supports the seafood industry, it also provides
economic, public health, food security, and environmental benefits in a
“win-win-win-win-win” situation.
Seafood
produces six times less than the carbon emissions of beef, said Diane Lynch,
president of the Rhode Island Food Policy Council, so shifting protein
consumption toward foods like shellfish and away from cattle could help to
mitigate the effects of climate change.
“We’re
just slowing [climate change] down, it’s too late to stop… but we have to do
much, much more,” Reed said, adding that the seafood industry is “much kinder
to the environment than some other folks.”
Linda
Cornish, president of the Seafood Nutrition Partnership, added that on top of
the other benefits, seafood is a valuable nutritional resource and
may contribute positively to mental health.
At
the end of the discussion, Mason Silkes brought out fresh oysters and showed
Reed how to shuck them while the group slurped them down.
Colleen
Cronin is a Report for America corps member who writes about environmental
issues in rural Rhode Island for ecoRI News.