Building a family oyster farm in Alaska

The company sells around a million oysters yearly – comparable to traditional oyster farms in Europe.

The farm grows oysters in floating rafts for up to four years, raising them in submerged trays alongside naturally-occurring mussels and kelp. The trays are periodically pulled up and cleaned to ensure good water flow.

“We keep sea urchins inside as they can graze down excess seaweed growth, but we remove starfish as they eat oysters,” Bates explains.

Come harvest time, the trays are hauled up. Laborers then clean and sort the oysters according to size, before shipping them out.

“We’ve customised a lot of our own equipment. Some of our gear was adapted from mussel farms, like conveyor belts for sorting,” Bates notes.

One specialised piece of kit Bates uses is the SED grader, a type typically used for sorting fruits and vegetables.

“This baby uses vision technology to measure and instantly grade up to eight oysters a second – almost 28,000 oysters an hour, which is equivalent to the working capacity of 13 people. Have you ever tried to teach a 20-year old dude how to sort oysters? With this, we no longer have to. Hopefully this boosts our production,” Bates explains.