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A full-time staff person helps year-round to repair and build equipment. Each of their 200 cages hold six bags made of mesh with
very small to fairly large holes. The oysters move from the tiny mesh bags to the big mesh bags as they mature over two or three
years.
The cages are moored over their 22-acre lease. The eel grass is still flourishing,
and the birds are no more a problem now than they had been at the nearby Bar Harbor
Airport. But like other oyster growers, those were some of the controversies they
faced as the Maine Department of Marine Resources deliberated on their application
for lease.

It may seem as though Maine oyster growers are everywhere, but Dana Morse,
Marine Extension Associate with the Maine Sea Grant Program in Walpole and
University of Maine Cooperative Extension, said it still has a long way to go. “It
may seem as if it’s taking off but it’s still small compared to Massachusetts,” he
said. “But Maine oysters are extraordinary.”

“It may be the clean cold water,” he said, “Maine is at a sweet spot, with a mix
of rocks and soil and rivers. We also have relatively high salinity here.” The 9 to
20-foot tides bring the oysters their daily food of algae that fattens them in the shell.
All of this endows a Maine oyster with its glorious sweet/salt delicacy.

Bar Harbor Blondes are particularly favored, both by nature in the cold clean
Mt. Desert Narrows, and by the Foggs, who are fussy and careful growers. They
sporadically put the oysters through a tumbler, a large turning cylinder that tumbles
the oysters and chips their edges. Jesse said this forces the bottom shell to curve up-
ward and grow into a deeper cup. “Meat fills the oyster shell,” he said.
They flip the oyster cages every 10 days on bright sunny days, lifting the oysters A handful of small oysters are ready to go
above the floats, out of the water. This allows the air to dry the bags and clears off into a new bag. In the background, some
any detritus fouling the trays or the oyster shells. Joanna Fogg takes great pride in of the oyster cages are turned upside down,
the clean smooth appearance of her oysters, another selling point.
to lift oysters out of the water and let them
dry in the sun. Photo courtesy of Bar Harbor
Oyster.

Working with the graders – the oysters slide inside the cylinder and fall through holes depending on their size – and then are sorted
into the right size mesh bags for the next stage of their growth. Photo courtesy of Bar Harbor Oyster Company.
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