By RUDI HEMPE
CELS News Editor and Reporter
Perry Raso must have antifreeze in his veins.
Recently, on one of the coldest days of this winter he and a co-worker were on the ice-strewn waters of Potters Cove in Matunuck, sorting oysters on an open wooden float anchored in the middle of his 3.8-acre oyster farm. A stiff breeze whipped across the shallow waters where thousands of bagged oysters were being nurtured to market size.
Tending an oyster farm is not bad duty in the summer but here it was in mid-winter and the harvest must go on. Customers of the Matunuck Oyster Farm—restaurants in Boston, New York, Newport and Narragansett were waiting for another shipment, regardless of the weather.
A tough job, but Raso, a graduate of the CELS Fisheries, Animal and Veterinary Science department wouldn’t have it any other way. He is hooked on aquaculture.
A long-time resident of the Matunuck area, he came to Rhode Island when his family moved here from New York. He attended the Matunuck Elementary School, about a mile from his sprawling, modernistic home, right on the shores of Potters Pond where his interest in fisheries was nourished—then and now.
He went to the University of Northern Colorado (the wrestling program was one attraction) but along the way decided he was truly interested in marine biology. He transferred to URI and was graduated in 2002. He is scheduled to get his masters in aquaculture this May.
“I always felt that growing shellfish and selling them would be a good thing,” says Raso, 27, who currently is president of the 30-member Ocean State Aquaculture Association.
He has been selling oysters for four years now.
It all started when he applied for and was granted permission to try his hand at shellfish aquaculture by leasing so-called “viability farms,” small sections of the Great Salt Pond. “That was to try my hand at the industry,” he explains.
Later, while scuba diving for shellfish, he came across a nice sandy, shallow area in Potters Pond. It was clean—only two dumped tires, he says—and free of eelgrass. He applied to the various state agencies for a 20-year lease on a portion of that section for an oyster farm. He started small, just over an acre, expanded it to the present 3.8 acres and has filed paperwork for yet another expansion.
The leased area was ideal for his plan to raise oysters in shallow waters (waist-deep) and also suitable for the system he planned to use.
He built long racks of PVC pipe that are anchored into the sand bottom. The racks support special European-made hard plastic bags which hold the oysters once they get to a certain size.
He buys the oyster seed (about 1 mm
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across) from a nursery in Connecticut. They are placed in a device called an upweller that encourages a flow of water across the seed oysters. In 1/1/2 to 3 months, the oysters grow enough (20 to 25 mm) to be placed in the plastic bags which have different mesh sizes depending on the size of their contents.
His bag/rack system of raising oysters is just one design. Different systems are devised to suit the peculiarities of each farm. “You can try to mimic someone else’s farm but there are many different factors”, he says, noting that water depth and flows are just two.
The bagged oysters are placed horizontally on the submerged racks. Daily they are tended by Raso and his workers (one employee in the winter, 3-4 in the summer) and they continually sort them for size. When they get to market size in two or three years, they are harvested and shipped. Massachusetts requires oysters to be 3 inches minimum.
“It was tough to start up,” he admits noting that there were a lot of expenses and no income until the oysters got to market size.
So far his operation has been pretty much trouble-free. There are some issues that crop up in aquaculture from time to time such as parasites that can kill oysters. One method of control is to take the oysters out of the water for a certain amount of time—place them on a dock long enough to kill the parasites but not long enough to kill the oysters. He has had no problems with two-footed intruders to his oyster farm. The area is well marked with floats and the water is too shallow for large boat traffic.
If there are any other problems, he says he can always rely on URI experts such as Dr. Marta Gomez-Chiarri for advice. In return, he has not forgotten his alma mater—for four years he has participated in the Coastal Fellows Program as a mentor to students interested in aquaculture.
Under the RI Aquaculture Initiative, he has also taken the aquaculture message to area high schools and has had students visit his farm.
The field of aquaculture is not without its problems. Occasionally there are boating interests who object to aquaculture farms tying up expanses of public waters—there are about 20 oyster farms in the state. And there are debates as to how large aquaculture should get in the state—there are about 85 acres of farms according to 2005 figures.
But Raso firmly believes that aquaculture is one answer to feeding the world’s growing population.
Besides providing a steady food supply, he says, “aquaculture provides service to the environment—shellfish cleanse the waters—and also provides jobs.”
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