Grand Isle aquaculture oysterman Scott Mauer can attest that even the best-laid plans to avoid disaster often go astray. His business partner Steve Pollock and him lost more than $400,000 in seed oyster. Mauer moves a couple of oyster cages on his camp on Grand Isle. Photo: Ed Lallo/Gulf Seafood News
by Ed Lallo/Gulf Seafood News Editor
Grand Isle aquaculture oysterman Scott Mauer can attest that even the best-laid plans to avoid disaster often go astray. As Hurricane Ida approached Louisiana, his seed-oyster business partner Steve Pollock and him evacuated more than ten million larva to Texas A&M University, and stored another twenty million at the LSU Sea Grant hatchery on the island. Ida managed to take out those at the hatchery and those in Texas died from unknown causes.
“I didn’t get into raising oysters to deal with policy, I’m really good at telling you what we need, but I’m not the guy to go to Washington and argue. That’s not what makes my life happy, he said. “I like being here on the island, I’ll live here without power before I’d go to Washington.” Photo: Ed Lallo/Gulf Seafood News
“Right before Ida we finally were producing a lot of seed. I was trying to get shipments out and protect what we had at the hatchery in Baton Rouge,” said the oysterman who has focused his attention on seed production since Hurricane Zeta wiped out his operations in 2020. “I evacuated ten million of our larva to Texas A&M-Coprus Christi. They did an emergency import. They ended up killing the batch. I figured if I took this to a university that it was my ‘Ace In the Hole’, boy that didn’t work out. We lost everything there. “
The two oyster seed entrepreneurs were also allowed to store seed at LSU’s Sea Grant’s hatchery. “As long as it stayed cool they would have been good,” he said sitting at his desk at his camp. “But the storm knocked out the natural gas feeding the hatchery generator. It got hot and we lost most of those seeds.”
Mauer said that the $400,000 loss wiped out any chance for profit, as well as set back caged-oyster growers in the Gulf depending on the seed. “We had orders for all those seeds and we had enough seed to fill all the orders.”
Reliable oyster seed production has been holding back not only the Gulf oyster aquaculture business, but also the East and West coast. Baby oysters in a sieve. Photo: Ed Lallo/Gulf Seafood News
Reliable oyster seed production has been holding back not only the Gulf oyster aquaculture business, but also the East and West coast. The Louisiana Oyster Company has been an effort to provide a reliable source for seed oysters.
During Hurricane Ida, Mauer evacuated to the hatchery at Baton Rouge where his business partner Steve Pollock produces the seed. His responsibility during the storm was keeping the generator going on his brood stock and larvae.
“I didn’t have a tremendous amount of cages out before Ida hit, only about two hundred because eight months earlier Hurricane Zeta wiped me out,” he told Gulf Seafood News
Seven months after Ida made landfall he admits he is still cleaning up from the storm.
Grande Isle Oysters
Grande Isle currently has two off-bottom oyster parks. Mauer and two others grow oysters in the older one located near the bridge. A new park, across from the Louisiana Department and Wildlife and Fisheries facility, has eight leases; five of them belonging to GoFish. He admits to growing oysters again, but isn’t telling anybody because of the high demand. “ When asked, I just tell everybody I’m out,” he said.
On Grand Isle caged oysters are grown in floating bags or on the bottom. Markers of the bottom caged oyster lease of Jules Melancon at sunrise. Photo: Ed Lallo/Gulf Seafood News
Mauer has been growing caged oysters for the past ten years. He says there is absolutely a future for seafood on Grand Isle and it’s coming back.
“What excites me is there are old oystermen who come and see what we are doing with our aquaculture,” said the oyster grower. “There eyes just light up, they know this is going to work. I have a neighbor who is trying to get his leases approved for aquaculture.”
He proudly tells the story of Morris Scott, an old-time oysterman.
“His wife and him came to visit, they were tired of being cooped-up because of Covid. I had my first five bottles of seed oysters set up next to my camp. The next day he came back and said ‘I want to come work with you’. This is a man old man on oxygen. He would sit on a bucket all day long putting baby oysters through a sieve. He loved looking at those little babies.”
Aquaculture oyster farmers on the isle were each give $1000 by the non-profit Oyster South. In addition, Sidecar Patio and Oyster Bar, a restaurant in New Orleans, held a fund raising event for the oystermen within weeks of the storm, raising more than $20,000.
Restaurants know the kind of product Grand Isle oyster farms can produce and want to keep it coming. Photo: Ed Lallo/Gulf Seafood News
“The restaurants that we have been providing oyster have helped us a lot,” he said. “They know the kind of product we can produce and want to keep it coming.”
He says he’s actually not too upset about Ida, that’s something you can’t control. What you can control upsets him a whole lot more.
“I’m not dead. I got nothing else to do. The only thing that’s going to kill us is the fresh water diversion. The only reason I say that, and I really try to stay neutral, is every time they open the Bonnet Carré Spillway half my oysters die. I measure the salinity. You can tell it’s the fresh water that kills them.”
He would have like to see the telephone poles littering the island after Ida destroyed it used to build islands filled in with sand. “Venice Italy was built on pilings, but that’s too cheap and easy. I wish they would at least look at alternative solutions. They are just dead set on killing an industry.”
Grand Isle has future and will come back. “You can’t live down here and complain about storms,” he said. “It’s encouraging see logical solutions go into place that will help protect the island, but you’re always going to get hit again. That’s just part of being a Gulf fishermen. I accept that risk.”
Seed Oysters
Baby oysters on a microscope at Steve Pollacks lab. Photo: Ed Lallo/Gulf Seafood News
The young oysterman is confident he will have regular production up and running by next year at this time as long as the water stays constant. The seed Pollock spawned in June of year last in Baton Rouge has been producing market-sized oysters since last November.
“I have never seen oysters grow that fast,” said Mauer. “Because Steve is doing things privately and away from coast, he can take a lot more care to produce better seed. We have essential solved the seed issue, something I have been fighting for ten years.”
Mauer believes having the operation in a “safe harbor” is essential. “I bought his farm down here and together we created a three-year plan to start a steady flow of seed oysters. It’s working now. We are the main seed producer on the Gulf Coast, producing more seed than anyone else.”
“The proof of ‘safe harbor’ came with Ida. We managed to stay in production. We still don’t have all the right equipment; I am running generators off the back of my truck with cords going everywhere. He needs a completely new backup power system, but he is insulated from water, quality and weather issues.”
“The proof of ‘safe harbor’ came with Ida. We managed to stay in production,” said Mauer. He works on the prototype lab next to his camp before moving to Baton Rouge. Photo: Ponchasurf/Keegan McGuire
According to Harlon Pearce, of the Gulf Seafood Foundation and chairman of the Louisiana Fishing Community Recovery Coalition, “Being proactive is important. We are working with Shell Oil on establishing “Safe Harbor” opportunities where seafood plants would have generation of power and palatable water. It has become obvious that we can’t keep rebuilding in the same old place and not expect the same thing to happen again.”
Mauer expressed the need for funding for new equipment to keep their seed oyster production even safer during storms.
The dynamic duo oyster seed producers are in the process of setting up a second hatchery in Texas, a state which recently approved legislation for caged grown oysters.
“I didn’t get into raising oysters to deal with policy, I’m really good at telling you what we need, but I’m not the guy to go to Washington and argue. That’s not what makes my life happy, he said. “I like being here on the island, I’ll live here without power before I’d go to Washington.”
Currently there is a tremendous shortage of oysters across the Gulf Coast. The Grand Isle oyster farmer can see a time they will be able to produce enough to fill the needs of oyster houses such as Dragos and Acme. He says, “It all starts with making seed, and that was what was so heartbreaking about last year. We did it. We were pumping out the oysters. It wasn’t that we lost the oysters; it was we lost the seed. That hurt everybody across the Gulf of Mexico.”
New Alternative Oyster Grants Announced
According to iconic oysterman Jules Melancon of Grand Isle, Louisiana Sea Grant at LSU and the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) have announced alternative oyster culture (AOC) grants. When Hurricane Ida stuck Melancon lost more than 100 cages of oysters, as well as other equipment, totaling more than $350,000. “I just lost everything,” said the oysterman, severely injured after a fall from trying to repair his roof Ida destroyed.
Iconic oysterman Jules Melancon’s harvested his caged grown oysters off of Grand Isle. When Hurricane Ida stuck Melancon lost more than 100 cages of oysters, as well as other equipment, totaling more than $350,000. Photo: Ed Lallo/Gulf Seafood News
Louisiana Sea Grant received a $3 million grant from the LDWF to expand alternative oyster culture throughout the coast. Of the total, $1.8 million is designated for grants awarded by Iberia Development Foundation.
Identified as an important adaptation strategy by people in the oyster industry during Louisiana’s Seafood Future workshops and surveys this AOC grant program is in response to industry suggestion; offering direct economic development assistance. Basic details of the grant program and applications can be found by visiting La Fisheries Forward for practical information on running an AOC facility. To apply visit: www.laseafoodfuture.com/aoc.
The first round of AOC grants totaling $330,000 were awarded to the following:
- Marcos Guerrero, dba Grand Isle Sea Farms, for a nursery farm and grow-out farm
- Scott Maurer, dba Louisiana Oyster Co. Farm, for a nursery farm and grow-out farm
- Jules Melancon, dba Caminada Bay Oyster Farm, for a nursery farm and grow-out farm
- Brandi Shelley, dba Shelley Farms Premium Louisiana Oysters, for a nursery farm and grow-out farm
- Nathan Herring, dba Bright Side Oyster Farm, for a grow-out farm
- Kim Galjour, dba Dos Gris Oyster Farm, for a grow-out farm
“The Department is happy to continue to support traditional oyster harvest activities, as well as support development of the off-bottom aquaculture portion of the state’s oyster industry,” said Patrick Banks, Assistant Secretary of LDWF Office of Fisheries. “Helping to provide this industry with real options to adapt to changing coastal conditions will be an important part of keeping it economically and culturally viable into the future.
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