[Rock guitar music] ♪ ♪ KEVIN MCCLAREN: I'm just pushing rock.

I'm just pushing rock every day.

That's what it is.

It's farming, you know.

It's nothing really more glamorous than farming.

It's actually a lot more work.

Farmers get to plant, sit around, and wait for it to come up and then harvest.

We don't get to do that.

We're 12 months a year.

[Oysters tumbling out of trap while music continues] ♪ ♪ KEVIN: We started back in 1999 it's just an idea.

Um, I linked up with a husband and wife who owned the property It's [unintelligible].

So, we started a hatchery and a farm, ran them simultaneously.

Sold some seed off, but there wasn't enough growers to make the hatchery viable.

That's when we decided to shut the hatchery down and just buy eyed larvae, and we've been growing oysters ever since.

So...23-year history.

KATE LIVIE: So, you know, aquaculture is now ascendant in the Chesapeake as becoming a real, you know, powerhouse in terms of how are we enjoying, how are we eating oysters, and how are we providing the market with oysters.

I think it's really important that when we think about oyster culture, the oyster culture here still really reflects that old waterman approach of going out and finding oysters wherever they may be.

And we're really seeing a literal sea change happening in the oyster industry right in front of us.

SCOTT BUDDEN: Like most seafood businesses, it's an early start.

Like, you tend to start, you know, seven in the morning, something like that, which is late for some fishermen standards.

The harvest day, they'll go out and they'll pull oysters according to orders.

So, we do everything harvest to order for buyer or chef.

We bring them in, they get washed, they get tumbled, they get sorted by size, and then they get hand-packed, and then they get cold-stored, and then they go out to the market.

It can be very simple, it can be very complicated.

It depends on like how your setup is, how your site behaves and performs, who you're selling to, what they want.

KATE: Aquaculture is opening up the industry to new types of entrepreneurs who are not just focused on a sustainable yield, but growing the number of oysters that they're able to raise.

SCOTT: We started off with 330,000 oysters in the water, and then we doubled that the next year.

We had a million oysters in the water.

I think by year three, we planted a million, so we had two million in the water.

So, it's grown, you know, pretty significantly, quickly.

KEVIN: Bubba keeps track of where everything is in the water.

So, it's all up in his head.

JAMES "BUBBA" PARKER: Normally, I can get the most with waders.

We just kind of pull in order.

We know what year class is what.

We know what needs to be split more than others.

So, we'll bring a couple lines into the crane here and pull everything up by the crane.

And then, when we put back, we try to put back in order, so you know how where everything's going.

Probably about a year till we'll touch it again.

[Oysters spilling into net] KATE: We're starting to see a demographic shift in the industry.

And now, we're seeing more entrepreneurs who might have business backgrounds, who might have business partners, getting involved in the industry.

[Sound of oysters nets being stacked] KEVIN: I have a bachelor's degree in marine science.

So, I've been growing some sort of fish for my whole professional career, post-college.

[Oysters spilling out] SCOTT: I've been involved with the oyster industry since probably 2012 in kind of a hobby fashion.

And then, officially started farming in 2015.

So, it's been going on close to almost a decade now we've been doing this.

I, originally, was working in D.C.

as a global consultant and financial analyst and wanted to return my roots here on the Eastern Shore and do something on the water, do something with my hands, and build something that it was actually tangible and do something that was actually good for the Bay in terms of water quality and habitat.

KELLIE FIALA: The Chesapeake Bay, the state of it today, is not where it once was.

And so, at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, we're working to try to get it back to a more balanced and a better place.

The Bay's problems, um, are multifaceted.

It's a very complex ecosystem.

SCOTT: There's an overabundance of nutrients in the Chesapeake Bay and really globally because of land use.

And as a result, that's affecting water clarity.

It's preventing sunlight from getting to the bottom and creating grasses and habitat for other animals.

So, a lot of conservation and restoration, rightfully so, is focused on keeping the nutrients from entering the watershed or into the water.

But I think in terms of cost effectiveness, the oyster has been identified as the solution to treat the illness that we're having, which is excess nutrients once they enter the water.

KELLIE: We have one species of oyster, the Eastern Oyster, but it's an incredible filter feeder.

It's unmatched in its filtering capacity.

They're able to filter up to 50 gallons of water a day when they're an adult size.

Historically, the oyster population could filter the Bay's water within three days to a week.

The population of oysters that we have today, it takes over a year.

So, we're looking at over, you know, 95 percent of a decrease in oyster populations.

KATE: So, I think there's a stereotype when we think about what's happened to oysters in the Chesapeake Bay that the reason for the decline in the oyster population has to do with watermen.

What we do see is a mismanagement of oysters beginning in the mid-20th century.

In our quest to have this sort of large-scale, national cultivation of oysters, we're moving oysters from one place to another and bringing diseases along and then watching kind of those diseases wreak havoc on our oyster populations.

We saw two waves of oyster diseases, MSX and Dermo, really bring this traditional oystering culture to its knees.

And it revealed how fragile it really was.

KELLIE: Aquaculture, the industry, I think is very misunderstood.

Oyster aquaculture is different.

You are growing oysters that are naturally occurring in the bodies of water that they would typically grow in.

You're actually not adding any inputs.

You're not controlling the environment.

The way that they grow is going to be the same way that they would grow naturally.

So, you're just adding a resource into a body of water that needs assistance.

You're giving it assistance, and you're getting a product out from that that's doing a lot of good.

SCOTT: So, oyster farming is one of the most sustainable proteins in the world.

It's probably second only like say insect farming or insect harvesting.

It's really sustainable because we have no inputs.

We don't feed the oysters any chemicals, antibiotics, medicine or anything like that.

We actually don't even have to give them any food.

It really can be as easy as just throwing a bunch of oysters on the bottom, coming back in a couple years, picking them up and selling them.

Or it can be as complex as we do it where everything is moved around, uh, sorted by size constantly, hand-packed and counted.

It can be that up to that level because a certain chef wants this size of oyster and another chef wants that.

So, it's as complex as you make it, and I think some of that's reflected in price.

If you're doing it with more complexity, you can command more in the market because your costs are higher.

If it's more simple and basic, then you're moving more volume, and you're probably getting less money per oyster.

They say, you're not a real oyster farmer until you've killed your first million oysters and I'm sure we've killed way more than that at this point.

KEVIN: When we first started, we used to really keep a lot of records about how many we set, and how many we sold, and we would deduct, set from sold.

What we found is you lose 50 percent to different things.

Crabs, storms, bags rippin' open, spilling oysters on the bottom.

So, if I want to sell a million oysters, I make sure I have 2 million seed at year one.

KATE: These are oysters that have been touched over and over, not just from the time that they're sort of purchased in their um, spat phase, but then the cages themselves are pulled up and they're tumbled over and over again to encourage a deeper cup on the oyster so that you know, when you're eating them on the half shell, it's a better consumer experience.

[Rattling sounds] SCOTT: There's a lot of hurdles and barriers to entry to even start growing oysters.

Um, and then it takes another 18 months to 2 years to even start making money.

So, you're cash negative for anywhere between 5 and 7 years potentially.

And that's hard for a small business.

When I first leased in Chester there was private property owner concerns, riparian, um, water concerns.

You have to lease the area of the tributary or the Bay or the coastal Bay...like...if you're on the ocean for example, from the State of Maryland.

It's all considered public water.

So, every stakeholder in theory has a say in that lease issuance process.

It takes 3 years on average in Maryland to get a lease.

We've had leases take four and a half years.

You've had one lease I think take 5 plus years.

So, it's a significant investment of time and also, you know, politicking at a local and state level.

And then, there's the regulatory environment.

At what point are people going to just say, look, you know, I can't operate a business when agencies take 6 months to a year, to several years to change something in my existing business?

I would say probably the biggest challenges are... ...you know, you have nature which you can't control, obviously.

It's more of a partner than a friend, and that's going to throw curve balls at you all the time, whether that's storms, or super-high tides, you know...breaking your gear, flipping cages, killing oysters.

I mean, it runs the gambit.

KEVIN: So, if you see those little barnacles on that float here, these are little barnacles that will grow up to be those kind of barnacles.

So, they set around this time of year.

We wait for them to finish setting and then we flip the float over so they then come out of the water.

We're really concerned about the mesh, not the frame.

Of course, the big barnacles on the frame don't help anything, right?

They're not kind to your skin or to ropes.

But what we want is we want those, the mesh, to remain clean so it gets the flow, so the oysters get the algae that they need to eat to grow.

This year I think we're getting a very light set because there's been so much fresh water in the river.

[Sound of water spraying] SCOTT: We're feast or famine with rainfall so the climate change is really starting to, peaks and valleys are getting farther apart and it's happening more frequently.

And that obviously creates issues with your product's consistency, and the growth rates and all that.

It's like every other year it seems like we're flipping the coin.

So that makes it tough, and that's going to put pressure on farms from an operational perspective.

[Man sorting oysters] SCOTT: Somebody told me once, you don't make money growing oysters, you make money selling oysters.

KEVIN: Every time somebody touches that oyster, it becomes more and more expensive.

Not even from the labor standpoint here, were talking about, but this is distribution.

So, every guy that touches that oyster wants another nickel out of it.

SCOTT: So, we do most of our own distribution, self-distributing, um, in the region, but we do go through wholesalers.

Outside of the region, since we don't have transportation logistics locally, we have to sell to wholesalers outside the region, or distributors outside the region.

KEVIN: Shipping out of the region is kind of difficult and it's a job unto itself.

So that's why you have these businesses that have popped up that do nothing but distribute oysters.

Because of our longevity, we've had distributors for years.

We've lost all of our distribution because some of these newer cheap oysters have picked up those distributors.

But we still maintain enough distribution that we're able to still make a living, keep the lights on.

We're about half of what we were doing eight years ago.

There's a few different factors, um, but the main driving force is the amount of new oyster farms online that are selling, everybody's selling in the same region, which has driven prices down.

[Dramatic music] KEVIN: There's not this huge market for oysters where somebody can make a lot of money and they say, "I want to start a business because I see a need."

What's happening is starry-eyed dreamers are being encouraged to start a project, right?

And they're being encouraged by the State.

There's just too many people.

My mantra always used to be, "If I can't sell a million oysters on the East Coast metropolis I should just get out of the business."

But I haven't been selling a million for a while, so maybe we should get out of the business.

We set the price 20 years ago, and the first farm that came online basically undercut us by a nickel.

The next farm that came online undercut that guy by a nickel.

And then, the next farm came on and undercut that guy by three cents.

So, it's become a race to the bottom in terms of oyster prices.

But most of the new oyster farmers, what they're finding is, they can't make a living out of it.

Because the prices are so low, and there's so much on the market, there's just not enough people that are eating regionally.

The problem is, these guys that are kind of new to the market and they can't make any money to begin with, you know, then they're the guys are tapping out.

SCOTT: I probably picked the hardest businesses, that, you know, you could pick, one of the hardest businesses you could pick, um, as far as a legal operation, in order to try to be a profitable business.

I see a lot of people start off rich, [chuckles] you know, turning $100 bills into $1 bills, but we'll see.

I mean, as the industry in the state matures, there's probably going to be consolidation of farms.

That's just how industries tend to go.

So, I'm starting to see that, unfortunately, with farms.

I know four that are for sale right now.

Um, there's potentially a fifth coming on soon.

So, unfortunately, it seems like there's a retraction happening.

KEVIN: You know how do you solve this conundrum of too many oysters on the market?

I mean, you're producing a great product, that has great environmental benefits, but yet you're having a hard time selling it.

And that's when I started saying, "Well, let's look at the restoration game."

You know, that's a novel way to take this product and to be able to utilize it.

KELLIE: So, the climate is changing, and what we do to either keep up with it, um, or not is going to be dependent on a lot of science.

And so...um, we're looking to utilize oysters as a huge part of that.

The program that we run here, the Oyster Gardening Program, we plant baby oysters on recycled shell.

Years ago, that happened naturally out in the water.

And so, we're having to replicate that now because there's not enough hard substrate in the water.

SCOTT: We are a net producer of shell.

We're additive to the shell problem that the state's currently facing.

Because that shell can be used to set diploid oysters on and make oyster reefs for restoration and other oyster farms.

KELLIE: But our oyster gardening program, all of the oysters that are grown, are for restoration only.

And so, what we're doing is we're growing oysters to get them to a better, you know, less vulnerable size, planted out on sanctuary reefs where they're able to be, you know, live out the rest of their life.

Our hope is that by planting the oysters out, that we do either through large- scale restoration, or through our oyster gardening program, is that eventually it will be self-sustaining.

You know, the oysters will be able to reproduce.

And so, our hope is that, you know, once we get the population back to a solid level and have an understanding of what that stock assessment looks like, we're hoping that, you know, they'll be able to continue to re-seed themselves.

I think the future of you know, oysters in the Chesapeake Bay is really exciting.

We're on track to meet our ten-tributary restoration goal by 2025, but there's a lot of hope for the future.

So, people are often confused or wondering, you know, why are we encouraging people to eat oysters when we're trying to restore them?

Oysters, whether they're grown for restoration or for aquaculture, they're still providing incredible benefits to the ecosystem.

KEVIN: If we are producing an environmental benefit, for society, why don't we get some change for that?

If we were able to get a piece of that restoration pie, it would make making a living much easier.

So, if we could get credits for environmental benefits, if we could actually use our oysters for restoration, these are all things that could make the industry more viable.

But I think, you know, people at Chesapeake Bay, they're not thinking about how to make the industry more viable.

They just know, you know, grow, baby, grow.

And it's not always that easy.

[Men sorting oysters] SCOTT: The days are hard, the days are long, they can be miserable, you're out in all weather, 52 weeks a year, and, you know, there's times where I'm like, I see something that I'm like, "Wow!

This farm has created this ecosystem."

But I'll tell you, that's, I think, a reason why a lot of people do stay in the business.

Uh, it's a sustaining factor.

I think that's the carrot that sometimes keeps people hooked.

And I can't speak for how people feel, but that's just kind of the read I've gotten from people is like, "Oh, we're doing good here, so we'll stick it out.

A really bad year financially, we'll stick it out.

Everything's breaking, we'll stick it out."

[Rock music fades in and continues] ♪ ♪