Still can’t believe what a harsh winter we’ve been experiencing this year. It’s been well over a decade since we’ve seen this level of ice in the bays.
Said ice has truly been wreaking havoc on local aquaculture operations, including ours. We have been unable to safely navigate out to our site because of the ice conditions so time will tell the extent of the damage we’ll be dealing with. The good news is our farm currently only utilizes bottom cages to grow our oysters-so in other words all our gear is full submerged and the cages sit on the bay bottom and are clipped onto a sinking lines that run between two heavy anchors-if these anchors hold then our lines should be okay but the ice pack can potentially move them, so fingers crossed that doesn’t happen. The ice masses will possibly drag some of our cages around but ideally they should still be in the vicinity of their anchor lines within our 10 acre farm site.
Our fellow farmers who utilize surface gear seem to be the most susceptible to damage, especially if they didn't sink their gear for the season. There has been much coverage locally in the news you may have read about, including in this NYT article that recently showcased what the industry is currently dealing with.
For now, I’m just going to shovel the snow out of my boat (this is a first!) and hope for a break in the ice soon so I can get out and do some inventory of my lines, and hopefully get some Valentine’s season oysters harvested! This is the first year since I started oyster farming that I made the call not to pull the boat in December as I typically do, and instead leave her in the marina with the intention of doing harvests all winter—but Mother Nature may be laughing at my plans at this point.
ELSEA is the lone boat still in the water and the kind folks at Great Bay Marina have been keeping an eye on her and keeping bubblers going so she doesn’t get iced in-they even offered to use one of their vessels to blaze a path through the ice in the creek to help get me out to the farm in the open bay, so we’ll see if we get a good weather window and make a run of it. Or perhaps I will take this weather as a sign that I should just hibernate for the rest of winter, I’ll keep you posted…….
