Q:  [0:00] So, how do you like to introduce yourself?

 

A:  [0:04] Well, I usually introduce myself – full name – Katherine Lipp, but everybody calls me Kat, and it’s fun to introduce myself here in Maine now because I moved recently, and I have a lot of family on my dad’s side, so when I say my last name now, people are always like, “Oh, are you related to blah, blah, blah?”  The state is so small, so it’s been quite – I don’t know.  It’s been a fun move and being able to drop my last name over here. (laughter)

 

Q:  [0:30] Nice.  And what year were you born?

 

A:  [0:32] 1992.

 

Q:  [0:34] And can you tell me a little bit about where you grew up?

 

A:  [0:37] Yes.  I grew up outside of Cleveland, Ohio, in a small town.  It’s called Chagrin Falls.  It’s very quaint, very just Americana.  It was a great childhood.  I have my two parents and my older sister.  Then, my whole dad’s side of the family is from Maine, so we came up here a lot as a kid.  Since I was six months old, we’ve been spending the summers up here.  I went to camp at Wavus camps and Kieve camps up in Damariscotta.  Then, I went away to school, to university in Florida, traveled to Alaska for about eight years in the fisheries industry, and then now I’m here in Maine.

 

Q:  [1:22] Great.  I’m going to return to a few parts of that later.

 

A:  [1:23] Perfect.

 

Q:  [1:24] But can you tell me a little bit more about your parents, what they did, what brought you up to Maine?

 

A:  [1:29] Yeah.  My parents – my mom’s name is Julia.  She was an attorney growing up, and then that took all of her time.  She didn’t like how she wasn’t spending time with my sister and I, so she stopped when I was about six or seven or stopped practicing.  And then my dad, he’s a salesman, so he was able to come up here in the summers and then travel.  He was traveling anyway, so he would travel in and out of Maine.  My dad’s side of the family is from the Boston area and then moved to Maine in the early ’80s, Whitefield/Alna area, closer to Damariscotta, and that was my paternal grandparents, and then everybody else sort of started trickling up here, including myself.  My parents still live in my hometown.  My sister lives in North Carolina.  She works for the National Park Service and Forestry Service and wildfires.  We spent a lot of time outside.  My mom always says she should have kept us in ballet a lot longer than she did because Kelsey and I are both just outdoors women.  We just are always outside doing something, her on land more, and me on the water more, but same-same.

 

Q:  [2:43] Great.  Do you have any history of fishing in your family at all?

 

A:  [2:47] No, none at all.  I studied marine science in school, so that was my first formal introduction to fisheries.  We’ve been really big oyster fans in our family for generations.  My grandpa was the biggest oyster fan, and he would always tell us stories – how he would dry dulse out on the clotheslines in Gloucester when he was growing up.  So, I have sort of a tie to this, more of just it feels very nostalgic hearing about it.  But nobody in my family has ever fished.  My dad was a merchant mariner for a year, maybe.  But I’m the first one diving into the fishing industry.

 

Q:  [3:30] That’s great.  To the merchant mariner point, did they do anything else in the water when you came to Maine?  Were you on the water?

 

A:  [3:35] Yeah.  I guess we were always on the water.  I have two older half-brothers, too.  They were really into sailing.  They did a bunch of J/22 sailing when they were younger, and my nephews are into that as well.  So, just boating experience in general, but nothing involved harvesting or an income from the water.  Just a little bit of merchant mariner when he – I think he was in college, and he was just trying to figure out what he was doing, and that was in the Great Lakes, too.  That wasn’t on the ocean.  That was throughout the Great Lakes.  But yeah, I’m kind of the first one, which is very fun.

 

Q:  [4:14] Great.  Can you describe your educational background a little for us?

 

A:  [4:18] Yes.  I went to my public high school when I was growing up, and then I studied Marine Science at University of Miami in Florida.  I did that for four years.  I got my undergrad degree from there.  Miami wasn’t the greatest fit for me.  I just wanted to go somewhere warm and away from home, mostly.  So, I actually studied abroad my whole junior year just to get a little bit of diversity and different experience.  So, I studied in University of Wollongong in Australia for a semester.  Honestly, not much studying happened.  It was very fun, though. Then, my second semester was with Sea Education Association out of Woods Hole in Falmouth, Massachusetts.  That was heavy on the studying.  We also sailed a 170-foot-tall ship from St Croix to Bermuda, New York City, and then up to Woods Hole.  So, the focus on those projects when we were in that semester were fisheries and conservation-related and marine resource management.  That was really my true first introduction of fisheries besides just lectures and at university.  We got to study the spiny lobster fishery in the Caribbean and Bermuda.  That was what my project was focused on.  Some people were studying the glacial migration through Sargassum Sea, which was fascinating to learn about.  I just love the mystery of it.  It’s so cool. Then, there was another project studying Sargassum, and it was all about how there was no borders – the Sargassum sea – there’s really no true boundaries to that sea.  So, it sort of tied together global ocean policy and then fisheries.  That planted the seed in my head that there’s a career.  I also loved working on that boat, so I realized that you can actually make a living working on boats and that lifestyle, which was cool.

 

Q:  [6:30] Great.  And then just two demographic questions: are you married?

 

A:  [6:34] No, I’m single.

 

Q:  [6:36] Do you have any children?

 

A:  [6:37] No, children, except Nori (sp?), my cat. (laughter)

 

Q:  [6:41] Great.  Sort of transitioning now into your role in the sector, how would you describe what you do in Maine’s fisheries and/or aquaculture?

 

A:  [6:48] I am officially an apprentice, an aquaculture apprentice, through GMRI and MAA’s program.  It’s a pilot program.  I was one of six of the first apprentices in the state and maybe perhaps countrywide.  They are really focusing on growing the workforce and seeing what the farms need from their workforce and providing that through program development and training.  I originally moved from Alaska to Maine with hopes of getting into the aquaculture industry.  I didn’t know at what scope or what scale, but I just knew I wanted to be closer to the family, and then I was interested in getting more into the aquaculture side of things, as opposed to wild harvest or wild fisheries as well. So, I’m an apprentice at Mere Point Oyster Company up in Brunswick.  We’re on Maquoit Bay, and that has been a great growing experience.  I’ve been there for about a year now, and I usually – generally, I’m a farm hand in general, but I also co-manage the nursery.  So when we get seed from the hatchery, we grow it up basically for the summer, for nine months, until we can hand it off to the farm manager, and they can grow it to market.

 

Q:  [8:13] Can you speak a little to what you were doing in Alaska?

 

A:  [8:16] Yeah, so in Alaska, I moved there right out of college.  I did a couple of different things up there.  First, I was a fisheries observer on groundfish fishing vessels.  We covered boats anywhere from 37 feet to 120 feet, catcher boats.  I never worked on any catcher processors or large, large draggers, and we focused on black cod, halibut, rockfish, pollock using long line pots or draggers.  I did that for three years.  It was contract work, so it was on and off.  It was a great – it was a great schedule for me out of college, and before my prefrontal cortex was formed.  It was quite the adventure.  Most people only do it for one or two contracts.  I really loved the – I loved the industry.  I loved the communities it supported.  I loved being able to travel on somebody else’s dime and make money while doing that.  That was really great experience. Ultimately, I was tired of living out of a duffel bag, which is essentially what I did for those three years, and I found a land-based, essentially observing job in Northern California for about nine months.  Although Northern California is gorgeous and I loved it there, I just needed to get back up to Alaska.  Alaska always has that draw.  It gets its hooks in you, and you can’t leave it.  I ultimately was looking for a job to get back up there.  I worked for – I got a position with a small company called Salmon Sisters, which is more retail and lifestyle brand, but they are a commercial fishing family, and everything is themed around wild fisheries and commercial fishing, and the Alaskan waters.  They have gear, and then they also sell wild Alaskan salmon that can be directly shipped to your door.  I kind of got to know that side of production and getting product across the country and how that kind of works, as opposed to just wild harvest in my fisheries experience or my observer experience. So, that was cool to learn.  I worked for them for four years, and then ultimately when I left working there, I worked as a deckhand/farm hand for a sockeye salmon set net site in the Western Cook Inlet, and I worked for a really lovely family that’s been fishing that spot for a couple generations, and they’re Alaska Native as well.  It was really cool to just get in that aspect of the industry that’s sort of been – I don’t know – looked over.  Set netting is really hard.  There’s no hydros.  It’s all like hand-hauled, hand-picked fish, really high-quality stuff.  It was really nice to be on that, as opposed to the large boats that I was working on prior.  It’s much more intimate.  Then, ultimately, after that, you either stay in Alaska for the rest of your life, or you have to get out at some point.  So, I took my chance, drove cross country, and ended up here.

 

Q:  [11:36] Great.  Can you talk a little bit about becoming a part of this apprenticeship?

 

A:  [11:40] Yes.  When I first got here, I was living with family.  They live in Cumberland and own a goat cheese creamery, so that was just a fun little stay away to learn about – but while I was living with them, I was just networking around at that point, trying to figure out what scope I wanted to enter the industry.  I was trying to get into more nonprofit work, but I realized, although wild fisheries – there’s a ton of transferable skills into aquaculture, and there’s a lot of similarities – I realized that I needed hands-on experience and just be a farmhand for a little bit. Actually, I networked with Annie Fagan.  A mutual friend put us in contact with each other, and I met her for coffee up in Bath.  She was the one who initially told me about this apprenticeship and was pretty adamant about me applying, which I’m forever grateful for her because I got that position.  I think they chose those in February or March.  They selected a select few people, placed them to different farms, and then the farms would interview you.  I interviewed with the Mere Point crew, and then they selected me as their apprentice, which is really great.  Yeah.  Does that answer your question?

 

Q:  [13:11] Yes.  I’m curious, with all of that, from initially going to Alaska to now, so how many years have you been involved in fisheries or aquaculture?

 

A:  [13:16] Going on ten years now, yeah, which seems like a lot now.  So, essentially, when I graduated college, I’ve been always involved in some aspects of wild fisheries and now aquaculture.

 

Q:  [13:29] Great.

 

A:  [13:30] A good 10 years now, which is in the double digits.  Feels good.

 

Q:  [13:31] Yeah, that’s awesome.  And then I’m guessing I know the answer to this.  But just for the sake of asking, do you hold any licenses?

 

A:  [13:40] No, I don’t.  I don’t hold any licenses – wild fishing or aquaculture.  When I began this process, I didn’t even think about having my own LPAs or anything like that.  But I’ve recently, in the last month or so, been eyeing maybe just a small little LPA for some oysters or something experimental even – would be interesting.  That’s the cool thing about aquaculture, is you can dip your toe in, and it’s not too – I don’t know.  The investment doesn’t have to be too great at the beginning.  So you can sort of explore, which is neat.  It’s exciting.

 

Q:  [14:20] Yeah.  Can I ask you maybe about your dreams with that?  What would that look like?

 

A:  [14:23] So, if I had my own – if I had my own farm, that would be great.  It would probably be like an inner tidal that’s really easy, hands-off oyster.  And then also, I think I would just tie it really closely to my family.  My family – we have a bunch of small businesses throughout, and again, my grandpa was a big fan.  So, I’d probably just – it would probably all just be an homage to my family, to be honest with you.  Growing good food in a sustainable way is important to me, so it’d feel good doing that.  That is probably a five or 10-year plan right there.

 

Q:  [15:04] Yeah, great.  I’m going to ask you a few questions about your experience.  You may have touched on some of the things I’m going to ask you about.  Feel free to repeat that.  Or, if you don’t want to repeat it, talk about something else or whatever feels right.

A:  [15:15] Cool.

 

Q:  [15:16] Do you have any experience in bookkeeping, bait, or gear preparation?

 

A:  [15:22] No bookkeeping.  Well, I mean, I’m familiar with regulations and logbooks.  That was something that I would have to check with captains when I was working as a fisheries observer.  I’m familiar with regulations and things like that that are required.  And then bait – yeah, I’ve baited a few hooks for long lines.  Sometimes, if it’s a hand-baiting boat, that takes hours and hours, and sometimes, I had nothing to do, so I might as well help the crew when I was observing.  I hate dealing with lobster bait.  We didn’t use pogies up in Alaska. (laughter) I think lobster bait is so gross.  I don’t think I could be a lobster.  I don’t know if I could be a sternman, but yeah, power to it. (laughter)

 

Q:  [16:09] Great.  And what about any experience in hatcheries or research and development related to fisheries or aquaculture?

 

A:  [16:15] Cool.  No.  I’ve only studied it from my own personal regard, and I got to visit the Downeast Institute for my apprenticeship.  So, in the apprenticeship program, there’s 2000 hours of on-the-job training and then 144 academic hours.  So, those academic hours, I’ve gotten to learn a lot about the hatchery business.  I think it’s fascinating.  Maine is pretty unique as well in that, at least in the oyster and seaweed production, you have to get product from within Maine, whereas other states like Massachusetts, that’s not necessarily the case.  So I think Maine is really unique, and I think it’s a good call.  But also, that being said, there’s only three hatcheries that you can choose from, or four, perhaps, in the state, so it’s limiting also, and it’s only what the hatchery can make available.  But I think the hatchery side of things is pretty interesting.  It’s much more scientific, which might pair well with my background.  I’ve thought about just dipping a toe and helping out at a hatchery sometime just to get the experience.  But no direct experience myself.

 

F:  [17:26] We say hatchery, but you talked about –

 

A:  [17:31] Oh, nursery, yeah.

 

F:  [17:32] I’m just thinking of the grow-out pre the oyster getting put in the cage on the farm. You do have –?  Would you speak a little (inaudible) –

 

A:  [17:38] Well, I’m not – yeah.

 

F:  [17:40] – should expand on wording on that one because your experience, I think, is what we meant by that.

 

A:  [17:46] Yeah, great.  So, hatchery – yeah.  We received the seed from the hatcheries.  Since we’re a large farm in the state, and we don’t have our own hatchery, we’re usually first on the list.  We’ve already gotten two batches of seed from Muscongus this year at 1.2 millimeters, I want to say – 1.2 to 1.5 – which is pretty small.  Then, on our side of things in the nursery, which is at Mere Point, we essentially – nursery is a bit of a loose term, but we refer to it from the point of getting seed to maybe up to an inch and a half, inch-75, and then we hand that over to the market, the guys who are keeping track of the market oysters. We don’t use FLUPSYs, though, so I don’t actually have experience with a floating upweller, but we use green seed bags, and we care for them every single day.  There’s husbandry every single day with those, which is like washing making sure that we hose them off with – it’s a high-volume, low-pressure hose.  We just wake the shit out of it with a boat, which is really easy, but it’s quite fun.  Then, we’ve been doing a bit more aggressive flipping schedule to keep them clean and shaping well.  They’ve already grown.  We got those two weeks ago this year, and they’ve grown.  I mean, they’ve at least doubled in size already, which is really crazy.  They’re growing really fast this year.  It’s hard to keep up.

 

F:  [19:28] Those guys are out in the marine environment?

 

A:  [19:31] Yeah.

 

F:  [19:32] It’s in its own site, or (inaudible) site?

 

A:  [19:35] Our whole farm – we have a standard lease in Maquoit Bay, and then further up the bay, so shallower and warmer, we have a few – like, six – LPAs as a company, and that’s our nursery.  So, a bit warmer.  It’s shallower, so there’s a lot more nutrients that get kicked up from the bottom there.  Then we grow those out to a certain size, and then those are moved to the standard lease into cages.  We do solely floating cages and top surface culture.  So, yeah.

 

F:  [20:16] Thanks.

 

Q:  [20:18] Great.  Do you have any experience –?  You maybe mentioned this a little with the Salmon Sisters.  But do you have any experience with processing, marketing, trade?

 

A:  [20:25] Let’s see.  Marketing and trade and brand building – I have experience from Salmon Sisters.  They were phenomenal at brand-building.  Yeah, essentially just branding things out, and then direct to consumer – I had a lot of experience with that and just logistics behind distributing seafood products.  It’s a little bit different with oysters because it’s a live animal as opposed to flash-frozen seafood, but honestly, oysters are the perfect thing to ship.  They’re already prepackaged, and it’s quite crazy.  Seaweed, I don’t have as much experience with, and I know that’s exactly the bottleneck that they’re running into in that industry.  Then, marketing – and then what was the first thing you asked?  Processing?

 

Q:  [20:20] Processing.

 

A:  [20:21] Yeah, processing.  My experience with processing was only all of my experience as a fisheries observer, and then the land-based equivalent to that that I did in Northern California.  So, I would work in fish plants for half the time.  I was either on the boat or in a fish plant.  Sometimes, I had to live at the fish plant, depending on where I was on the islands.  Out in Akutan, you lived in the dorm at a seafood processing plant with all the plant processors. That was always a really cool experience because it is something that’s not – I mean, it’s a huge aspect of the industry, but people only think about the fishermen.  They don’t really think about the land – sometimes, it’s not even land-based; sometimes, they’re out at sea – and what it’s like to live in those situations.  That’s pretty much the only place where you would see diversity in Alaska, which was fascinating, and that’s also almost exclusively the place where I would work with women the most, as well.  I only worked on two boats out of the 30-something that I worked on that had women crew member.  So, that’s more in my experience, but that would just be little bits and pieces that I would pick up while spending time in there.

 

Q:  [22:42] Sure.  What about food prep, consumer interface –?  Anything like that?

 

A:  [22:46] That I do have.  I’ve worked as a server, and I’ve done a bit of catering work as well, so I understand – I have had experience from sea to plate, essentially.  When I lived in California, I actually worked at a fish plant that we sold at the same restaurant that I worked at as well at night.  So, it was really cool.  I could point out – it was on the water, too, and I could point out the boats out on the water that were catching the rockfish that we were serving in our tacos.  That was a really cool full-circle aspect of it.  But I do have a bit of experience.  I’m not like a chef by any means.  I’m a decent at-home cook.  I love cooking seafood specifically. I always really enjoyed being a server, educating people about seafood industry, and that was – also, at Salmon Sisters, in the retail space, you would have to educate people on why wild seafood is important and knowing where your seafood come from.  It’s not necessarily – in Alaska, they’re very pro wild seafood, but that’s a unique place because they have it all available, and it hasn’t been fished for hundreds and hundreds of years, commercially, industrially, like the East Coast.  It’s only been 40, 50 years there.  It’s more about the importance of knowing where your seafood comes from, and educating people that way was always a pretty enjoyable part of my job.

 

Q:  [24:12] Great.  Do you have any experience in advocacy, community-based organization related to fisheries or aquaculture?

 

A:  [24:19] Not directly.  I’ve never worked in the nonprofit sector before, but I’ve participated in grassroots efforts in Alaska a lot.  It’s just part of the culture, naturally, which is really cool.  But because everybody is tied – even inland, everybody’s tied to the fisheries.  So, a big one that we would participate in as a business, and then I would also help out personally, was Bristol Bay, the No Mines in Bristol Bay.  That was a big project that was ongoing in all my years in Alaska.  It’s an ongoing effort, too, but that was just more a personal thing I was paying attention to rather than direct experience.

 

F:  [25:10] Is that the Pebble Mine?

 

A:  [25:11] Yeah, No Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay.  So, it’s been ongoing.  The interest has floated from one foreign company to another, and you just have to keep up on it.  There’s really cool efforts that have been going on for, like, 30 years in Alaska to fight the Pebble Mine, including music festivals and private companies doing their own thing or private businesses and family businesses doing their own grassroots effort.  It was effective because, at the time being, I think the Clean Water Act was (inaudible) there.  I want to say that it was like the final ruling.  That’s a fascinating project and something that I still keep an eye on, even though I’m over in Maine now.

 

Q:  [26:02] Great.  Did you have another question?

 

F:  [26:04] Oh, no, I’m good.

 

Q:  [26:05] I’m curious if you could describe what an average day looks like for you now.

 

A:  [26:10] Sure.  So, it’s summertime, so things are pretty – they’re kicking up on the oyster farm, and because it gets so hot here now during the day as we start earlier.  So, I wake up at five.  I usually give myself an hour to get ready for the morning, and then I meet two other co-workers at the Back Cove parking lot, and we carpool up to Brunswick together.  So, that’s great, helps on gas.  We usually get to work just before seven. I’m in charge of keeping the cooler temperatures, but that’s purely because I’m the only one who remembers to do it. (laughter) The first thing I do when I get to work is report the cooler temperatures, which is important for a food safety aspect.  I think it’s important.  Then, we usually get our assignment for the day.  So, since it’s June and we have new seed on the farm, I usually head out with me – it’s me, and then my co-nursery manager, Derek Devereaux, who’s one of the families – part of the families that own Mere Point Oyster Company.  We head out, and we check on the little babies – they’re so cute – and do any aspect of husbandry from there. So, generally speaking, most of it is tumbling, but washing the seed, flipping it, making sure that everything’s aligned with the currents, and it’s getting enough flow.  That’s generally what we’re doing until four or five.  So, usually in the summer, we work like five tens or five nines, and then we wrap up for the day, carpool back here to Portland, and then, generally speaking, either myself or my cousin, who’s my roommate, will cook dinner.  Pretty lowkey.  I’m pretty boring when I get home at the end of the day.  It’s hot, and I work all day.  I try and go for a walk, at least, if I’m feeling really healthy, and then it’s back to it the next day.

 

Q:  [28:16] Great.  Thank you.  How do you feel like your background or your identity shapes your work, including the way that you’re maybe perceived, treated anything like that?

 

A:  [28:25] Yeah, that’s something that I think about – I don’t realize that I think about it, but I think about it more than what I even let myself on to.  I think specifically at the beginning, when I’m working on a new project, I just go above and beyond, and I have to prove it for myself, as well as prove it for other women out there.  It does feel like you have to represent whatever your group or your gender identity is as a whole, and that might be just personally imparted on me.  I feel that responsibility.  I’m sure if you talk to other – if you talk to some guy at my work, they would never think that, but I don’t know if they are even thinking about that either. So, at first, I always work even harder than I think I could probably work, and everybody appreciates hard work, so proving myself in that way.  That being said also is, I have all the experience of working on the water for at least nine or 10 years before starting this new job.  Not everybody gets that opportunity.  It’s hard that you have to represent women as a whole.  But I also don’t want to be the standard because there’s so many other ways that a female on our team could help out.  That’s not necessarily exactly what I do because of my experience. I do think about it.  Sometimes, the jobs that are given and assigned to me, I’m always like, “Is that because I’m a girl, or is that because I’m actually good at it?”  And then there was a time there – well, first of all, the winter is always just dark and hard to get through, especially February, March.  But I injured my rotator cuff – my bicep – in yoga, not even work related. (laughter) I started getting a lot more assignments that were not so physical.  It didn’t really feel like I was helping the farm directly.  I was doing a lot more organization things, gear work.  So, I went through this tough time in the early spring and late winter of questioning, “Can women work in this industry?”  If I’m struggling right now, is that something that we have to change about the industry, or is that me? What I’ve ultimately realized is that you always need a resting period, first of all, and I just injured myself from overworking in general, but then also all those jobs that I was doing, even though I was the only one doing it, and I was the only girl doing it, they helped the farm immensely.  There were regulation things, like marking buoys that mark our standard leases, things that you have to be organized.  I don’t know – organized and clean and concise.  Since I’m a woman, I actually am good at those things, so it does help the farm as a whole.  I don’t know.  Yeah.  I do think about it more than what I thought I did.  Definitely. I think somebody spoke to me about this.  Actually. Annie Fagan.  They interviewed me for the Shared Waters program, which I took the Shared Waters program.  Sorry, I’m diverting right now that’s online, it’s free, and it’s for everybody.  I did that in the winter that I first came here via Zoom, and then I also participated in the women’s and non-binary specific one this last fall, in spring and winter.  They interviewed me for that, trying to figure out what women wanted from the program and how I felt about it.  That was only eight months ago, I would say, and I was like, “Oh, I don’t really think about it at all.  La-di-da.”  But I realized this winter – I was like, “No, you do think about it more than you actually let on.” That was a really great program, and Annie did a phenomenal job with it.  I would say, at first, people online were upset, saying, “Why do we need separate spaces?  We should all be treated equally,” which I agree with.  But also, I will say that the second space that they made for us was 10 times better than the first.  I took away a lot more.  The networking was way better.  I actually made connections as opposed to the first one.  I think that we took away even more than the first one provided.  I think a separate space is really great as long as you integrate it with the actual industry.  I took a lot away from that.  I was a little upset when it ended, to be honest. (laughter)

 

F:  [33:25] Have you guys stayed in touch at all?  You said you built (inaudible) –?

 

A:  [33:27] Yeah.  We have a WhatsApp that’s been popping off.  Obviously, it’s a busy season now, but I’m sure we’ll get together as a group, and maybe next year when they do another class, they can have a reunion or some sort of party at some place, but they did a great job, truly.

 

Q:  [33:49] Great.  I’m curious, how do you feel your role in the sector interacts with any family or caregiving responsibilities you might have?

 

A:  [33:55] Yeah.  I don’t personally have any children, and I’m unmarried, but I do think my experience and my lifestyle before wasn’t conducive to relationships unless you have somebody that – I don’t know.  I mean, it’s unconventional, I would say, the way that I’ve been living my life.  I really love my career.  So, I do think – I’m a classic millennial.  I’ve been putting everything into my work, which has questions in itself there.  It’s difficult hours, but that being said, that’s a huge reason why I got into aquaculture as opposed to wild fisheries and why I made that transition.  I’m 32 now, so that trajectory matches the more traditional way that people move through their life. So, I moved to aquaculture because you can still work on the water and make a living working really hard on the water, but you get to come home.  I take a shower every single day.  It’s amazing.  I didn’t get to do that when I worked on boats.  I was lucky if I got one every two weeks.  When I went fishing, the whole thing that we did all summer long was build a shower.  We didn’t get to use it because we built it in the last week, but we built a shower.  So, being able to come home, have my cat – come home, have dinner with my cousin, take a shower – these are things that aquaculture can provide, but then also you get to work on the water and put in the nitty-gritty work.  That’s a bit more conducive to being able to take care of a family or have a bit more of a traditional partnership, something like that.

 

Q:  [35:45] Great.  Thank you so much.  I’m going to transition into questions about environmental change and your observations.  Feel free to reach into your Alaska experience, your Maine experience, whatever feels right.  Just make that clear for me.

 

A:  [35:56] Yes.

 

Q:  [35:58] So, just starting with, can you describe any changes in the marine environment that you’ve noticed?

 

A:  [36:02] Yes, definitely, directly.  I have a science background, so I always want to be like, this is just observational rather than actually proven numbers.  But I think observational – observations from people who have worked on the water every single day are super important.  Even though it is somewhat objective, I think it’s still really valid data.  My experience in Alaska, and another reason why I made this transition from wild fisheries to aquaculture, was the extractive aspect of everything just felt – I don’t know.  It was getting to me, ultimately.  There’s so much money going into the industry to make these boats top-end.  They can find fish anywhere. I always just question how sustainable that is in the long run, especially when we’re moving into – they just shipped a 400-foot floating seafood processing plant to Bristol Bay.  It’s state-of-the-art.  Never been seen before.  Bristol Bay is such a contentious area because every year the fishermen are like, “We’ve had record catch.”  We had had record catch, and then the next year, “This is the most fish we’ve ever caught.” Meanwhile, you go up the river, and the Native Villages up there don’t have any fish to feed themselves.  It’s not necessarily a direct – because I never actually fished in the bay, but that’s one of the reasons why I never wanted to fish in the bay was I just don’t necessarily think the regulation matched up to what is actually happening out there.  I was on the regulation side of things.  I was a fisheries observer for three years in Alaska.  Even in training, it was very much an “us versus” them mentality, which was really hard to grasp because I was like, it’s an “us versus them,” but I’m living in their house for two weeks on end on their boat, in their house and their homes.  I can’t treat them like other – or that we’re two separate entities.  I’m much more of a cooperative resource management – I prefer that style. So, it’s a reason why I’ve switched from fisheries to aquaculture because it felt a bit more – I don’t know.  It just felt a bit more sustainable.  I think food security is a really big issue, obviously, globally, and so we need protein as a population as a whole.  So, the projects – and I think there’s still a lot of money going into aquaculture, too, which is really cool, maybe just as much as wild fisheries.  So, just to bring these projects up to standard, I would like to see.  I’ve just seen that trend personally throughout my career. But direct environmental changes?  I’m new to Maquoit Bay, Maquoit Bay in Brunswick Maine, but this is my second year, so I’ve already even noticed the same patterns that are happening from last year, and when the fish come in and when the seals come in after it, and certain birds show up.  But this year, there’s far less eiders than I saw previous years or the last year, I should say.  There’s less eider babies.  We had crazy mussel sets, which was unheard of last year, and that’s because the blue mussels don’t like being in the intertidal zone right now because it’s too warm, so they were going deeper.  They set all over our gear.  So that was a trend that I’ve noticed that is a bit more environmental. In the bay that we work in, there’s very little eel grass left, and that is cyclical, as we learn from science, but there’s a ton of private residences in that area that, as much as aquaculture is regulated – and that was a cool thing about being in Maine, is that it’s regulated in Maine.  I mentioned earlier how you have to get your seed from Maine.  It’s regulated by the state of Maine.  All the businesses have to be in Maine, whereas in Alaska, that was getting regulated from Washington, from Seattle.  That sort of disconnected – it was a disconnect from the place that you’re regulating. So, I think Maine is really inspiring that way.  Although, Maine does move slow.  They can’t really pivot in these ways.  I think that’s kind of a Mainers – I don’t know.  It’s a quality of being a Mainer is that you take the information in slowly.  But the thing is, is that climate change is happening fast, so it’s hard for businesses to reconcile the two, the slow-moving and the philosophy on regulation in Maine, and then what you need to do as a business to pivot.  That’s been interesting because it’s moving way faster in the Gulf of Maine than it is most places in the world, maybe second to Alaska.  It’s just interesting to notice the changes but then also see the similarities between Alaska and Maine and how they deal with climate change in general.

 

Q:  [41:50] Yeah.  How are  – I’m curious –these differences in species you’re seeing maybe between years impacting your work?  But also, how do you feel this conflict between regulation timing and the timing of nature –?  How do you feel like that’s impacting your work?

 

A:  [42:08] Yeah.  Our business is at a unique point scaling as well.  We’re the third largest in the state right now.  We have a lot of attention on us as well.  It’s been hard for us to pivot based off of what the regulations are.  I understand both sides of things.  From the business standpoint, if you were a farm, a land-based farm, you would be able to just buy whatever equipment that you needed to buy to fix the new weed that is growing or the new Asian jumping worm that’s in your garden, or something like that.  But in aquaculture, you have to go through these regulations because we’re leasing our area from the public trust.  It’s not our water.  It’s nobody’s water.  It’s barely even the state of Maine’s water.  It’s a unique thing that businesses – if you’re looking to start a business in aquaculture, it’s just something that you should take into account. I will say it’s a bit frustrating because all eyes are on us.  Also, all the eyes are on DMR.  They’re under a really immense amount of stress.  If one farm does something wrong, it could affect all the farms throughout Maine.  But climate change is affecting everything really quickly.  And then on top of that, if you aren’t here year-round, or if you’re not on the water year-round, it’s easy for second homers to come in here in the summer and be a loud voice and put the pressure on.  I think that’s just part of being in a democracy sometimes, is that that’s something that you have to deal with.  But it’s really hard to – it’s hard for me to come at it from an understanding standpoint because they’re not here every single day.  We’re on the water every single day.  Even in the winter when it’s icing over, even when there’s a thunderstorm yesterday, we’re the ones on the water. It’s hard not to feel that ownership on the space in the waters that we’re leasing from the state because we do – I think it’s always a balance of – when people get emotional, or they feel like ownership over these things, I think it’s always important to just remember that they care.  It’s just that they really care about it.  But I think also maybe they just need to have their voice be heard, and that’s it.  You don’t really have to take action upon it. Second homers – it’s a really big thing in Brunswick.  They don’t pay taxes to the town.  The company pays plenty of taxes to the town.  So, it’s always a question of go where the money is or whatnot.  But Brunswick is a very unique town in that way, more than other places in Maine that we’ve been dealing with.  The social license of aquaculture is something that could use some work in a lot of places in Maine.  Some places, it’s – in Damariscotta River, there’s tons of social license.  People identify with being by oyster farms all the time, but where we are at, we’re considered an eyesore or a disruption to the peace, which is interesting because we’re just trying to make money and work on the water.  Mostly just trying to make a living for ourselves. It’s kind of interesting.  Although Maine is a really small state, and you’re one degree separated from pretty much everyone, the fact that there’s so much variation in social licensing with oyster farms or with aquaculture throughout the state is interesting.  The impacts of that, I’m not sure.  I know DMR is dealing with it.  I know our company is dealing with that.  Just getting pressure from external sources that have a bit more money than either entity has.

 

F:  [46:15] Can I ask a follow-up?  Circling back to – I’m just thinking – you elaborated on some of those in a really helpful way, but a little more about the blue mussel biofouling, how that issue impacts your work or work of the company?

 

A:  [46:31] Yeah.  That was new last year when I came in.  They’re just discovering that that was a huge issue.  They had a set in the fall that was not taken care of until late spring, and at that point, mussels grow so quickly.  They’re like weeds of the ocean.  They grow so fast, but they’re not as durable as oysters, so you can get rid of them, but it takes a lot of work.  They set all over our gear, all over the cages, into bags because it’s tiny, tiny, so it could – luckily, it didn’t get in any seed bag because it was in the fall, but it got into all the bags.  What we had to do in the spring was figure out how to mitigate these mussels while not also spreading them back into our farm. So, we first – what did we do? – tried excessive flipping, but then it got too warm to do that too aggressively.  We have a tumbler.  We started hand shaking – every single bag, we would just slam the shit out of it, break it up, and then we would shake the oysters by hand, and hopefully the mussels would release.  That took a ton of manpower.  We pretty much threw every strong high schooler and college student that we hired that summer onto that.  It was messy.  It was hot.  It was hard work.  So then we realized, as a business, we can’t solely depend on that.  How can we pivot?  That being said, you can’t – per regulations, you’re unable to add a new machine to your lease, or a new boat, or even a new dock, or something like that, to your lease without getting it approved by DMR. So, we’re actively trying to mitigate these mussels that are growing a quarter inch a month and also spawning and growing more mussels every five months.  But we’re unable to add a new machine to our process because it has to go through the entire amendment process.  It’s really difficult for a business to catch up to a problem that they’re currently dealing with.  But then we also can’t add anything without DMR’s approval, which was specific to blue mussels.  It wasn’t just our farm.  It was pretty much – every farm in Casco Bay got hit with blue mussels. We’ve gotten on top of it.  They spawned again in the spring, but we were able to do it – we caught it really, really early and were able to do a couple of flips.  For the most part, those baby mussels are dead, and we’re dealing with the last couple strings of some mussels – and the mussels that caused us issues last fall and last spring, right now, if we didn’t get to that bag, the mussels are this big right now.  They’re a full three inches, bigger than Bangs Island mussels.  We’re really good at growing mussels, too, but we would prefer to focus on the oyster growing. (laughter) The mussels took a huge hit, and also, they stress out the oysters.  It’s not just a hard thing to deal with.  They do threaten our product.  So, they stress the mussels.  They compete with nutrients.  They can compete for space.  So, then our oysters grow in funny shapes.  There’s a business side or the market side of things that you don’t want the mussels – and then, even on the processing side, it took our orders at least a couple hours longer to get through completely because you would have to pick every mussel off because we don’t want mussels going to our restaurants or our wholesale accounts.  So, it affected us on the water.  It affected us on land with processing and everything, too. Also, at one point, we did an excessive flip, a more aggressive flip, during the warmer months, and then the oysters were under stress.  We actually had large – because with the flip, we were trying to get rid of the mussels.  But then there was also a virus that was in the water that killed off, surprisingly, more of our market oysters, our older oysters.  So, even from a business standpoint and having enough inventory to cover us through the fall and the winter, the mussels were a huge hit to us as a business. Luckily, we live, and we learn.  We’ve gotten ahead of it at this point, but we’re still really limited.  We are limited in dock space.  We need more space to do this.  We can’t add more docks because our lease doesn’t allow it.  We could use another tumbler, but we’re not allowed another tumbler without getting that approved.  There’s a couple – there’s this machine that we got, which is a shaker.  It’s used for smaller oysters to grade those out.  But then we’ve realized that that’s actually really good for getting rid of mussels as well.  You can rub it all over it.  It’s like a cheese grater.  That works really great, but we’re not allowed to bring that on the water because it’s not approved.  So, what we have to do is bring oyster bags onto land, get them in a cooler, shake them, get them back in a cooler, get them in the water. Pretty much every time you bring oysters onto land, or you do any sort of handling like that, you can expect a 20% loss.  So, every time we do that, you can calculate a 20% loss with that, which is, if we were able to do it on the water, would be less.  Yeah, it was a really big issue.  But yeah, again, we’ve kind of lived and learned.  We got ahead of it this time, so we’ll see.  Then there’s going to be a new species that pops up.  So, who knows?  It could be barnacles.  Barnacles are getting more and more up here, which they deal with a lot down south in warmer waters.  You can get a huge barnacle set, and it would be equivalent to mussels, but they cut you constantly. (laughter) So yeah, it’ll just be a new species that’s kind of trickling its way up as the waters get warmer.

 

Q:  [53:11] So you described some of the adaptations and changes with the mussels that you’re seeing.  Are there any other adaptations you’re making in response to environmental change on the farm?  Any other ways you’re thinking about that there?

 

A:  [53:24] Yeah, let’s see.  I would say we’re taking into account water temperatures a lot more.  We’re keeping a lot closer eye on that.  We don’t want to stress out the oysters.  They’re really heat resistant, luckily, but, in general speaking, we grow Northern Eastern oysters.  It’s all the same species throughout the eastern seaboard, but ours are more cold water – used to that.  I think we’re keeping track of temperatures a lot more, which is important for our nursery, and then it’s also important for our flip schedule, making sure that we don’t stress it out before, perhaps, a big kind of virus, or an algal bloom or something like that.  We don’t have any other kind of data receiving entities –we use these little HOBO loggers that are like a thermostat or thermometer. Overall, as a company – as a state, we’re currently under a vibrio watch, or the vibrio mitigation plan maybe is the more official term.  As of June 1, the whole state is underneath that, whereas previous years, it was only two or three places throughout the state, but the DMR decided it was much more responsible to put the whole state underneath that. Fortunately, our company was already doing a lot of vibrio control plans prior to that regulation catching up.  We were pretty much set up for it.  June 1 was not a hard transition for us.  But I know a lot of smaller companies have had to change a lot of things, and we are fortunate because we’re a larger company.  Smaller companies, not so much.  Ice is really expensive, setting up cooler spaces is really expensive.  We have a ton of solar panels on our barns.  We barely pay for electricity as a company.  That was something that they did many, many years ago.  If you’re trying to implement that now, it would take months. So, we’re fortunate because we’re big.  That’s pretty much what it is – with the new vibrio plan.  But it makes a lot of sense.  Vibrio sounds very scary.  It’s really not that scary.  It’s a naturally occurring bacteria.  We worked with a UMaine grad student last summer, and she was doing this really cool project.  Within the vibrio family, there’s, we’ll say, 30-something strains, but only three of them are detrimental to humans – could actually makes humans sick.  The current vibrio plan is (inaudible) – the current vibrio plan is that if you are in a vibrio area that’s shut down for having it being present, you have to test until that level is low enough.  But what this cool grad student was trying to figure out is if we can test for that specific pathogenic vibrio, the vibrio that would make people sick upon consumption, and so then that way, farms could test out of the vibrio a bit easier. I think they use RNA/DNA testing in the water, and then they can determine if the vibrio present is just vibrio.  That’s just a natural bacteria that is in tons of places, or it’s something that can make people sick.  That’s kind of cool how we’re using the academic and science side of things.  She also worked with DMR on this project to update the regulations and not have it be such a hard hammer, kind of give a little bit of leeway to the farmers.

 

F:  [57:29] Is that nuance being distinguished now in practice?

 

A:  [57:31] I think she’s running the numbers now.  She had three test sites.  I want to say one was in Scarborough, which was a river that was previously under a vibrio control plan.  She had our test site, which is – we kind of represent Casco Bay, but we’re on the northern side of it, so we’re not close to Portland, where runoff events affect us as much.  Then, they tested a farm up in Damariscotta, which was the other place that they had a vibrio control plan.  I think they’re comparing the three.  She’s probably running through that data right now.  It’ll probably be a little bit before that kicks in, but at least they’re looking towards and working with those projects to make it a bit easier for businesses to function as things are changing.

 

Q:  [58:19] Yeah.  You mentioned the size of the farm and also this work being done.  I’m curious if there’s anything else that you feel like your farm is really drawing on to be able to adapt.  Some words that might spark things: resources, relationships, knowledge, training, organization.

 

A:  [58:33] Yeah.  I mean, all those things, for sure.  We are at a scaling point where we have some leveraging ability in a good and bad way.  All eyes are on us, so that can be hard.  But then, that being said, we can represent farms as a whole, and we’re still a family-owned and operated farm even though we are larger.  It’s still owned by two families.  Both their sons work every single day on the farm.  Excuse me.  All four sons – two sons from each family.  We can kind of represent these smaller farms.  They only started with a few LPAs in 2016, so it’s a young company.  We can represent these smaller farms while also having the leverage that a larger farm can.  But that being said, it’s hard to be a big farm and also be a small farm and a small business, in a way. But resources – we work really closely with DMR as much as possible.  We worked with that UMaine grad student last year.  Relationships.  We have a good working relationship with most farms in the area, I would say.  That’s kind of the cool thing about aquaculture in Maine in general, as opposed to maybe my wild fishery experience in Alaska.  Up there, they’re not super willing to help other people out.  You work for your own boat or your own company, and you’re trying to meet your quota.  Whereas in aquaculture, in Maine, even when I first moved here, I was getting the feeling that everybody just sort of wants to help each other out.  Rising tide lifts all boats.  Everybody’s all about putting people into contact with somebody that’s experienced the same issue.  We have farm tours.  We have people come to our farm all the time that are checking out our Tumbler system because that’s solar-powered as well.  We designed that so we could – we give the design to other people that might want to use a similar system. I think it’s really important to maintain relationships, especially as things are changing because a farm that’s further south than us could warn us that something might hit us a little bit further north, and vice versa.  Also, we marketing – a bit of marketing experience and a following on Instagram, so we can help other farms or other businesses around us sort of gain leverage and gain some popularity in that way as well, which, I think – yeah, just maintaining the relationships in the scope of climate change is really important just because all farms are dealing with the same thing, essentially, because waters are warming, and it’s not just affecting one bay more than another.

 

Q:  [1:01:33] Yeah, great.  As you look towards the future, are there any adaptations that you really hope the farm makes, any things that you think are going to be really important?

 

A:  [1:01:42] I think the move towards solar is really great.  There’s tons of grants and stuff like that that are floating around that can help businesses – I don’t know – implement that a bit more.  We have plenty of solar on our land-based operation and then also in the water.  There’s a ton of single-use plastic that’s used in aquaculture as a whole.  We help people with cage design, things like that.  But that’s not just like the things that we use on the water.  Even your gear has plastic.  Grundéns is all plastic or the boots that you wear, and then everything that we use, from – tens of thousands of bags that we have are plastic.  That’s just something that I’m concerned about.  I know there’s a lot of projects that are going on.  The Myco Buoys are super cool.  I’ve been hearing about those.  Even Alaska people were talking about Myco Buoys.  I think that’s fascinating. I do wonder – the scalability of everything because our farm is so big.  If I ultimately have my own personal farm, I would like to implement a ton more sustainable materials.  I know there’s some cool farms that are further up north, closer to Bar Harbor, that are fully plastic-free, which I think is phenomenal.  I just don’t think that’s scalable to the farm size that we run right now.  It would be interesting to see – maybe bioplastics would be cool. Oh, there is actually a really cool project, too.  So, the mussels being an issue, and just biofouling, in general, I think there’s some project going on – somebody’s diving into it – of essentially like a kelp-based coating system.  You could spray it on the bottom of your boat.  You could potentially spray it all over your cages or your gear or something. Because if you ever look at seaweed or wild kelp, nothing’s ever growing on it.  There’s maybe some bryozoans and maybe a snail or two, but nothing holds on to the kelp.  So, if they could come up with this sort of spray or something – it’s not even bottom paint.  It would go on top of everything.  That would coat everything.  Then, the bio-fouling wouldn’t be so much of an issue.  It would kind of just slough off.  How that would be implemented I have no idea.  I’m not a research and development – I’m more of an ideas girl, but I think these projects are really cool, and there’s a ton of money going into different aquaculture. I always think of aquaculture as food-based.  That’s where my mind is always at, is food, but the kelp projects and more of an industrial – as more of an industrial product or ingredient is fascinating, but Maine as a whole probably doesn’t grow enough kelp to sustain that industrial thing.  You might have to look to Alaska for that.  I think there’s tons of really cool projects out there, but what will actually take hold and what’s scalable to a farm that’s as big as ours is a whole other issue.

 

Q:  [1:05:04] Yeah.  When you’re looking towards the future, what is your biggest concern for Maine’s fisheries and aquaculture?

 

A:  [1:05:11] I think it’s a balance of being able to pivot and having to change how you’re running your business based off of the curve balls that climate change is throwing at you.  But then also that being said, I’m pro-regulation and keeping an eye on things because businesses, if they just go unregulated, we’ve seen where that goes as a whole.  So, I think it’s a balance between the two things, and finding that balance is, again, a whole other – it’s a much deeper issue than I’m able to speak on.  But I do think becoming more sustainable as a whole – so going to single plastics – I don’t know.  Even how we ship things, like logistics of that, I think is really important because just shipping and logistics is a whole other side of industries that – it’s major. If we want to do direct-to-consumer, which you get a higher profit yield out of it, there’s a bit more of a spread there.  Then you have to rely on logistics, which is a whole other thing.  I think solar is really cool and using less gas-based products would be neat.  But I haven’t heard of anybody that really likes any of the electric motors.  So, that’s a whole other thing in itself.  Also, where are you getting the electricity from when you’re plugging it in? As a whole, I’m always a bit more sustainably conscious.  I think pretty much everybody on our team is, even if they don’t really even know that they are when we’re picking up trash in the bay.  We’re constantly picking up after just – the things that we find in the bay is crazy sometimes.  It’s – I don’t know – birthday balloons and just the random stuff.  They don’t realize that they actually are more climate-minded than what they would let on to.  We also have a really great supervisor at our farm, and he’s always pretty conscientious and wants to implement as many more sustainable things.  But also, it’s always hard as a business because it’s like a cost analysis thing. As a state as a whole, Dana Morse is doing really great stuff.  He has his own – I think it’s a personal project himself.  He likes to update everybody in the area about cool, new, plastic-free products – things like that.  Again, going back to the community and relationships that helps a ton.

 

Q:  [1:07:59] Yeah.  If you could tell policymakers, “This should be your biggest priority,” when you look towards the future, with respect to aquaculture, fisheries, and the environment, what would you tell them?

 

A:  [1:08:09] I would say, listen to your farmers.  Listen to the people who are on the ground doing it, rather than – I think that there’s tons of other entities and nonprofits and academia that help and can voice all these ideas and can study it through and through and put these big words into it.  But your farmers are the ones who are out there dealing with it, and everybody likes – it’s the same with land-based agriculture.  Everybody wants the food.  Everybody wants the really nice product, the organic product, or whatnot, the most sustainable one, but nobody ever wants the farmers.  Nobody ever listens to the people who are actually growing it.  I think just listen to your farmers.  Get to know them a little bit more.  Get out on the water yourself instead of being removed from the resource and removed from this thing that you’re managing.  Also, a lot more cooperative effort instead of a top-down regulatory attitude.  I think just working together only ever going to help.  Excuse me.

 

Q:  [1:09:25] Great.  Thank you.  Sort of transitioning, have you participated in any climate resilience or adaptation training for fishing or aquaculture in Maine?

 

A:  [1:09:35] Sorry.  One sec.  Can I get you guys a seltzer or anything?

 

F:  [1:09:41] I would take one.

 

Q:  [1:09:42] I’d take one as well.

 

F:  [1:09:43] It’s so hot.  Thank you.

 

A:  [1:09:44] They’re pineapple.  It’s so weird.

 

Q:  [1:09:45] Oh my gosh, thank you.

 

F:  [1:09:46] Thank you.

 

A:  [1:09:50] (Katherine with tears) Here you go.  I just got a little tickle.  I’m so emotional on climate change.

 

F:  [1:09:56] Yeah (laughter) Make sure to put that parentheses – Kat with tears.

 

A:  [1:10:01] Tears. (laughter)

 

F:  [1:10:02] Goes to fridge.

 

A:  [1:10:03] Goes to tears.  Needs a seltzer. (laughter) Can you repeat your last question?

 

Q:  [1:10:08] Yes, of course.

 

A:  [1:10:09] Thank you.

 

Q:  [1:10:10] Have you participated in any climate resilience or adaptation training for the fishing or aquaculture industry?

 

A:  [1:10:15] Hmm.  I don’t think so, not directly, honestly.  I guess I’ve just picked up from – sorry, guys. (coughs) I don’t know where this came from.  I don’t think directly, honestly.  We’ve picked up a little bit from the aquaculture webinars that I participated in.  Then, I don’t know.  I just feel maybe the social media algorithm has figured me out when I get pushed these articles, and they know I’m interested in it, so it’s just a personal learning project.  But other than that, I don’t know if there’s many resources for farms or farmers to directly reach out and learn from and put in the stuff that they are seeing directly. I guess I would be kind of going back to the cooperative sort of things.  The farmers see it.  They can observe everything, but they may not understand the grander scheme behind things.  So, molding the academia or the farmers and allowing them to understand what they’re seeing as opposed to just being observations and vice versa.  I mean, it helps the academia as well.  Without a cause or – there’s a really great quote out there that I’ll totally botch, but – data without a heart, or data without like a human story is just numbers and vice versa.  Observations without data or without numbers or explanation is just a story. I think just molding those things together, which is where I’m most passionate about because I do have an academic background and a scientific background, but I also love being out there on the water and doing the actual farm work.  Personally, I would like to see more of that, I think, bridging those two.

 

Q:  [1:12:34] Yeah.  You touched on this a lot, but if there’s anything else you want to add, what other strategies do you think would be effective in helping build resilience in Maine’s aquaculture industry?

 

A:  [1:12:45] Yeah, so I touched on that a little bit, but a more cooperative management style, which you can look to other countries.  It doesn’t even have to be ocean-based policy or anything like that.  A lot of land management policies are moving more towards a cooperative stance on things, as opposed to just regulation coming from top down.  I think a little bit of – not even leniency – flexibility with regulations and being able to do that, and that also could just be a staffing issue, something beyond anybody’s understanding on the outside, but a little bit of flexibility would allow farms to meet the demand while also dealing with climate change and functioning without bogging down the state essentially. That being said – and I just really don’t think any of the farms – this is personal, but a little bit of flexibility – I don’t think anybody’s going to be taking advantage of it.  Again, everybody’s looking out for each other.  They all work together.  I think giving farms a bit of flexibility in that way, it’s not going to spiral out of control like one would do on the land, or something like that.  Again, we are still just leasing it from the public trust.  There’s only so much you can do.  It’s not even a permanent thing.  You have to go back every 10 years and be reassessed.  I think that would help a lot. Education.  I’m not sure.  I think it’s also education of the public, not just education of the farms.  I think a lot of people are scared when they hear the term aquaculture.  I, myself, was even one of those people when I was living in a place that was like purely wild fish, wild-caught propaganda.  That was what Alaska pushes.  But that makes sense in Alaska.  It doesn’t necessarily make sense elsewhere. I know people who are gunning for changing wording, rebranding aquaculture.  Mariculture is always floated around, which I think is interesting.  I don’t always think rebranding is the correct answer.  There’s enough marketing out there in the world.  I think it’s also just public education, and that can help the industry as a whole.  I think that’s, in part, the industry’s responsibility, too.  It’s not for other people to do.  It’s on us because once people get to know the farmers and get to know these businesses, they’ll have a tie to it, and they would be much more open to eating farm-raised seafood or an aquaculture product from Maine. We do farm tours at our business.  They’re really fun.  Going back to me educating the public about where their food comes from, I get to do a few of them throughout the summer.  People’s response is it’s always so much fun.  Nobody’s ever seen an oyster farm, but they’ve eaten oysters.  They have no idea where it comes from.  Just bringing them out there and giving them the full five cents experience really ties them to the place and the product.  Tying them to the product, which is then tied to the place, they might be more concerned about it in the long run for climate change and how that might affect it.  Yeah.  Just education, working together – simple concepts. (laughter)

 

Q:  [1:16:36] Great.  I’m curious.  Are there any other changes you’re seeing, maybe not environmental, not related to social license that you want to tell us about?

 

A:  [1:16:43] I suppose.  I mean, there’s changes just the way that business and – I don’t know – just the way the world runs, like corporations stepping in and buying out smaller farms, which is good and bad, in a lot of senses.  They can provide higher pay and health benefits.  But also, that means that it’s not a locally owned business.  I can foresee that happening a lot more in the industry, and that is something that, as a state or just as an industry, we have to figure out.  I think it’s kind of the natural progression of being in the economic world that we live in now. I’ve always just been very pro-small – I’ve almost exclusively worked for small businesses since I was 16.  I just think that there’s something special about working for a small business, even though it’s craziness and disorganized, and nobody ever really knows the answer.  But I think that’s the beauty of it all, as opposed to – that being said, you can get things done quicker when it’s in a small business, as opposed to it being a corporation.  That might hurt people in the long run, if they’re not able to change quickly, especially if that corporation is in Canada or somewhere that’s not Maine.  Again, not place-based and community-based like all these things used to be.  I could see that affecting the industry as a whole in Maine. Also, again, I mentioned this a little bit earlier, but although aquaculture is big in Maine, and we do have some larger farms, they’re still, on a global scale, considered micro-farms.  There are farms that are acres and square miles large in Africa and China and in Canada and Ireland, plenty of places.  I think it’s always kind of funny when Maine is – it’s a little bit insular – insulated, and they’re comparing and being like, “Well, that farm’s huge.  That’s a factory farm.”  Plenty of people call our farm factory farms, which is ridiculous.  I’ll just say it’s ridiculous. (laughter) They have no idea the actual scale that things are grown on in the world, and that’s maybe where we need to go towards, or we just need to accept that it’s only ever going to be small-scale farms in Maine, but that means that we may not be doing industrial-sized operations in this state, and that’s fine.  There’s other places that you can do that, and it might be more like socially aware or accepted. I think it’s really funny when people are like, “That’s a factory farm.  That farm is huge.”  We have 16 acres at our farm.  We only use 12 of them.  And people call us a factory farm.  And I was like, “You have no idea.  This is very small scale.”  We only have nine full-time employees.  It’s using that super-weighted language that, again, is just a loud minority that’s being loud and putting the pressure on us and the state.  But in the large context of things, Maine is a blip.  But you can learn a lot from just a small-scale sort of organization or industry.  I don’t know.  It’s an interesting intersection of all of it.

 

Q:  [1:20:50] Can you tell me about any real positive change you’ve seen or opportunity?

 

A:  [1:20:54] Going the main part of the interview is there are more women involved on a farming level rather than on the processing or land side of things.  I want to say I saw some stat that 40 or 50% of license holders of LPAs in Maine, which is the smaller license you can hold, are female or nonbinary, which I think is amazing.  I think just having that equality, a bit more like that gendered equality, can only lift up the industry as a whole because it is – it’s backbreaking work.  Nothing about aquaculture is ergonomic whatsoever. You are hauling all the time.  But that being said, you don’t have to be the strongest person in order to be a successful oyster farmer.  There’s tons of tools, and again, there’s tons of money going into making things easier that can really – yeah, it opens the door for more women or nonbinary, or a bit more – not just like brute and brawn.  That being said, it makes it easier on the men as well.  They shouldn’t be breaking their backs, either.  It’s only just good improvements overall.  I think that’s really – yeah, that’s a positive change that I’ve been seeing. I think that consumers are a bit more – that is trending is that farm-raised used to be really red-flagged.  I think that consumers are now realizing they just need to know where their seafood is from.  It’s not necessarily one is worse than the other.  It’s just more about knowing where your food come from.  I think consumers are getting more – they’re smarter now.  They’re asking the right questions.  That’s definitely a trend that I’m seeing that I think can only be a positive. I don’t know.  I think the research side of things, too.  They’re starting to do more projects that are climate change-based.  Some of the hatcheries that we work with, I know they’re working on more warm-water-resistant brood stock.  So, they’re choosing who is spawning and who are the mother and father of that batch.  They’re choosing those based on their ability to withstand certain temperature variation.  That would help the farms, in the long run, being able to work with the changing water temperatures.  Clearly, it’s on the academic side, but seeing one that will trickle down a bit more to the actual farms will be interesting.  But it’s definitely on the forefront of everybody’s minds.

 

Q:  [1:24:08] Great.  And then my last question: what is your hopeful vision for the future of Maine’s fisheries and aquaculture?

 

A:  [1:24:14] Hopeful.  I guess I hope that it would be a bit more of a cooperative industry.  It already is, but I see room for improvement.  I like the trend of less single-use plastics, and I think ultimately, with the right amount of money going into research and things like that, that would be available.  It is pretty regenerative already as an industry.  So, I think emphasizing that would be making it even more so.  That would be really helpful.  I don’t know. I guess maybe just, all in all, people not being afraid to eat raw oysters.  I do sometimes take it personally when people are like, “I would never eat that raw,” with ultimate disdain in their voice.  I’m like, “You don’t have to say it like that.  You could just say, ‘I don’t prefer it.’”  I think I would be really hopeful for people to actually try raw oysters more because everybody that I’ve given my oysters to have previously never ate raw oysters are all converts.  I think, hopefully, more people would enjoy raw oysters.  That would be really nice because they’ve really changed my life.  So, I think it would be cool to change other people’s lives, too.

 

Q:  [1:25:47] Great.  Thank you.  Is there anything else you want to share with us before we end the interview?

 

A:  [1:25:50] No, but thank you so much.  This was great.

 

Q:  [1:25:52] Yeah, of course.

 

F:  [1:25:54] I have a few small (inaudible) questions.

 

A:  [1:25:55] Yes, please.

 

F:  [1:25:46] I was just curious.  You talked about different species showing up and different species that are pests or things you have to manage.  I was just curious.  We have heard some of this, and I was wondering if it influences your work on the farm.  Is green crabs – if you have any observations that (inaudible) green crabs?

 

A:  [1:26:13] Yeah.  They’re definitely present.  We really only deal with them at the beginning, in the spring, when we raise all our cages.  In the winter, we fill all the pontoons with water.  We sink them down to the bottom for three or four months, depending on ice and water temperatures.  This winter, we actually didn’t really have any issues, so ultimately sinking – we didn’t need to sink the farm.  But you never know.  When we raise the cages, they’ll be filled with green crabs.  Fortunately, we haven’t noticed any detrimental aspects of that with our oysters.  They crowd the cages, and they’re a bit of a pest. Where we do have issues with green crabs is that – so, our bay is – it used to be one of the most – I don’t know – prolific and highest yield shellfish bays for clams, specifically.  So, when we have to go to meetings for – let’s say we have a new dock that was proposed.  We get a lot of pushback from the diggers, the clam diggers, because their product and their resource is really, really threatened right now, and they’re actively getting beaches shut down.  My heart goes out to the clam diggers.  But they don’t know where to point a finger, and it’s easiest to point a finger at an oyster farm than an invasive species. Currently, we’re dealing with trying to educate clam diggers that our floating oyster farm is not taking – their argument is that we’re taking all the nutrients from the bay, which is – that bay has really high turnover.  It’s super shallow.  It has a ton of upwelling.  There’s plenty of nutrients.  We’re just trying to educate – we’re not the ones who are threatening your livelihood or your resource.  Honestly, the green crabs and then the climate change and the warming waters are the biggest threat to clams right now. Also, they’ve been a pretty poorly managed resource, as well.  If you look at the landing numbers, it’s crazy.  You could just look at the landing numbers and see the trends.  Green crabs ourselves are not an issue, but that’s just because we do top culture for the most part, which is fortunate,  But then we have mussels on top culture, so it’s a pick your –

 

F:  [1:28:52] Avoiding one (inaudible).

 

A:  [1:28:53] Yeah, exactly.

 

F:  [1:28:54] So, you’re just picking them out of the cages when you lift them in the Spring.

 

A:  [1:28:56] We pick them out of the cages when we lift them, and then sometimes they’ll still be one in a bag that we didn’t get to.  I always try and give them – personally, I try and give them a quick death, just punch them out, and that’s that.  But some people throw them back.  We had a new girl training, and I was like, “Oh, that’s invasive.  Normally, we kill them.”  She was like, “Oh.”  And I was like, “You don’t have to, though.  You can just throw it back if you’re not comfortable with that.”  She’s like, “OK.”  So, she just threw it back.

 

F:  [1:29:21] They’re not predation.

 

A:  [1:29:22] They’re not pred –

 

F:  [1:29:23] Predation isn’t the issue.  It’s a space issue.

 

A:  [1:29:25] Yeah, no, they’re not – supposedly, when the oysters are small enough, they might, but we have never had a green crab in our in our spat bags, in our small packs.  Knock on wood.  That’s not an issue.  I know that it affects a lot of other farms.  It’s definitely affecting the clam diggers the most out of everybody.

 

F:  [1:29:47] And then, one more follow-up question, which was just, I was just wanting to make sure I have understood you well and that this is a fair characterization.  I think your comments and thoughts about the scale question of a farm is really interesting, and looking within Maine versus outside of Maine, of course, scale is – according to what?

 

A:  [1:30:07] Yeah, exactly.

 

F:  [1:30:09] Is it big or small?  But within Maine, it’s a big, but family-owned farm.  Still rather small, as you’ve noted.  I was just curious – we’ve talked to a lot of smaller farmers, and you made some – I was just thinking about scale impacts adaptation and wondering if it’s a fair characterization to say that it seems like, as a bigger farm, you all have been able to perhaps have the assets to be able to invest in making some changes, but maybe are a little bit –?  Do you feel like it’s fair that at that scale, though, it’s a little limited in the flexibility, the ability to make short-term changes?  Or do you think not so much?  Because I know small farms have the flexibility aspect.  They don’t have to check out with anyone to make a change, but they may not have the assets.  So, I don’t know.  I just wanted to see if you could comment on that and make sure I’m understanding the difference or characterization well.

 

A:  [1:31:02] Totally, yeah.  I think that’s a fair assessment as well.  We’re large enough where we have the financial ability to invest in these things, and also, our owners are more than willing to throw money at a machine that might just make things easier.  That being said, we also – if something were to happen, the amount of oysters that we would have to get through in order to make it not a problem anymore is at a scale that smaller farmers don’t need to do.  We buy – how many?  I think we’re set for three million seed this year.  We have 1.1 so far.  That’s just seed alone, within early June.  It helps that you’re bigger because you have the finances to pay for things and the backing for that.  But then also, we can’t just get rid of a problem quickly. It has to be a full scale – which is actually – it’s pretty funny that I work for this company now too, because in my previous company, it’s a small business, but when you’re in that middle ground where you’re not a full-blown corporation, but you’re still a small business, you’re held to these standards of a large business.  You’re held to these – people are looking at you like you’re a large business, but we’re really just a small, family-owned business that is a little bit larger than the other LPAs or a smaller farm in Maine.  Yeah.  You can hide behind being a small business, but then you can also hide behind being a larger business too.  I think scaling is just interesting to me as a whole.  There’s definitely benefits of just remaining small, and then there’s obvious benefits for the growth and the scaling up.  So, kind of a catch-22, I think.

 

F:  [1:33:10] Interesting.  Thank you so much.

 

A:  [1:33:12] Of course.  Thank you.

 

Q:  [1:33:13] Great.  I’ll go ahead and turn this off.

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