New Seed

It seems like we’re getting new seed every other day now; I swear, each morning I come in, Jeff or Ivy or Georgia is telling me about a new shipment that came in the previous afternoon. Though the arrival of new seed is ultimately a good thing- new seed means new oysters down the road- in the short term, it has made for quite a few headaches.

The first problem is that our upwellers are quickly filling up, so much so that we’ve had to temporarily put extra baskets in the troughs in between the upwellers, where the pumps are located. This has worked, but as new seed keeps coming in, the troughs are now full.

The second problem is that the seed is growing rapidly. In this week alone, some of it seems to have doubled in size. Usually, this isn’t a problem, as there are empty upwellers and baskets, and the now-larger seed can just be redistributed so that it has enough room to grow. However, because there aren’t any open upwellers, the seed can’t be moved around and is quickly filling up the baskets.

Fortunately, a solution is in the works. We are expanding our upwelling docks to add a new type of upweller that uses large cylindrical containers instead of baskets; these containers will hold far more seed than the baskets, and thus alleviate the space issue. So while it is frustrating to deal with the increased seed volume now, help is on the way.

-Ben Kelly