New Gear for New Growers: Commercializing a Low-cost Oyster Sorter for Small-Scale and Diversified Business Enterprises

PI:  Josh Stoll, UM School of Marine Sciences

Aquaculture represents a major economic opportunity for coastal communities in the United States and has the potential to be a way for fishermen to diversify their employment. Small-scale aquaculture businesses are the fastest growing subset of farms in Maine. In 2017 the Maine Department of Marine Resources issued more than 400 limited purpose aquaculture permits to over 100 independent businesses. For small-scale aquaculture businesses like these to be profitable in the long-term there is a need for cost- and scale-appropriate tools that facilitates efficient operations. However, this equipment largely does not exist in the marketplace at this point. Acknowledging this issue, we propose to commercialize a small, low-cost oyster sorter that we have been developing (and tested with farmers in the summer of 2018). We will focus on the oyster sorter because: (1) we have an existing prototype; (2) oyster farming is rapidly expanding in Maine and more broadly; and (3) sorting is an essential part of oyster husbandry, but it an extremely time-consuming process if it is not mechanized. In the long-term, this equipment could be packaged as part of a suite of scale-appropriate gear for aquaculture start-up companies and small-scale farmers.