Trio’s 5-year plan is to bring 500,000 oysters to market from farm in the Great Egg Inlet; their first crop, planted in 2019, is maturing this summer
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
OCEAN CITY – If you look down from the walkway on the western side of the Garden State Parkway bridge over the Great Egg Inlet, you can see where a trio of oyster farmers hopes to harvest a half-million Summer Salts annually within five years.
The Ocean City trio, led by Martin Schlembach, planted 400,000 seeds (tiny oysters) in June 2019 over their 6-acre plot abutting Drag Island, which is on the north side of the inlet. Those oysters are maturing this summer.
They have harvested 10,000 Summer Salt oysters so far, some of which have gone onto the menus at the Deauville Inn in Strathmere and Dock’s Oyster House in Atlantic City.
The group had hoped to harvest nearly 200,000 this season, but they may not reach that goal with the shortened, restricted business season forced by the COVID-19 pandemic. They are, however, ahead of where they thought they would be when they did the planting in 2019.
When Schlembach talks about planting, he is referring to how the seeds are placed in special mesh bags about 18 inches wide and 36 inches long that allow the water to flow through. The bags are buoyed by floats, attached to moorings, and arrayed in wide arcs just under the surface of the water.
One bag can fit 30,000 seeds, but as the tiny oysters grow, they are separated and transferred to other bags. By the time the oysters are mature, one bag will fit only about 200 oysters.
The growing oysters are in two abutting plots, one comprising 4 acres in a little cove between the base of the parkway bridge and Drag Island, the other nearby, hugging the shore of the inlet just to the west.
The placement matters for two reasons. One is that they are in “approved” water – tested by the state as clean and appropriate for aquaculture. The second has to do with the keys to growth.
Schlembach explains the diverse plots offer different variables that affect the growth rate. The cove is shallower with mid-current toward the inlet but no current close to Drag Island. The 2-acre plot is deeper and has a lot of current. The more current, the faster the growth because it means more food – phytoplankton and little bits of algae – flowing past the oysters, which are filter feeders.
“So if we want to change growth rates, we can move them to different parts of the farm to make adjustments on how fast or slow they grow,” he said. In basic terms, “You put a lot of food in front of one guy and not the other guy, one guy is going to be big and the other is going to be small.”
Schlembach and his partners, Keith Zammit, an Ocean City High School science teacher, and Zammit’s stepdaughter, Emily Dougan, an OCHS grad, did not do a lot of experimenting with the first crop of 400,000 seeds they planted in 2019, but they are with the 800,000 new seeds they planted this past June. They believe their plots have room for 2 million oysters.
This year they put the seeds in different locations so they can watch their growth rates.
“We’re still trying to figure out where our best spots on the farm are,” Schlembach said. “That takes years of experience and trial and error. “
Although factors because of the pandemic may limit this season’s take, they originally didn’t expect a harvest for one and a half to two years, so when they had oysters maturing at just over a year, they were pleasantly surprised.
The water in the cove is just about 4 feet deep as Zammit demonstrated when he went in chest deep to retrieve a pair of bags – one of mature oysters and the other containing the seeds. The other plot is up to 11 feet deep in one corner so they prefer to wait until low tide to move the bags. (In preparation for Tropical Storm Isaias, which brought with it the tornado that tore through Upper Township Aug. 4, they moved all the bags of oysters into the cove so they would be protected.)
The technique Schlembach, Zammit and Dougan use is called floating culture because of the way the oysters float in bags in the water. They say it is more technologically advanced than some of the other popular farming methods such as dredging and rack and cage.
Floating allows the oysters to get the food that flows past “plus the wave action makes them hit each other and it helps them create a cup,” which is the more rounded portion on half of the shell. “An oyster wants to grow long and thin,” Schlembach said, but as they bump into each other, it chips off the rib end of the shell and the oysters instead grow a deeper cup.
To check on the oysters’ progress, the aqua-farmers take out the bags and put them through a pair of tumblers – roughly 6-foot-long cylinders with holes of increasing size perforating them. The smaller cylinder is for the fledgling oysters, the other for the larger oysters.
As the oysters roll through the tumbler, the smallest ones fall through the smaller holes, then others fall through increasingly larger holes. Those are sorted and put back in bags and back into the water to continue to grow.
“If they make it out the other end,” Schlembach said, “they go to the restaurant.”
Ready for the restaurant
When the mature oysters come out of the end of the tumbler, “we count them, put them in bags, put them in a slurry of ice mixed with salt water – salt water from this farm, because this is approved water,” Schlembach said. “Right over there,” he said, pointing to a different part of the inlet, “is not approved. If you put that water in (with the oysters), you don’t know what’s in it. That’s the law. This water is approved so we pull that water in from this lot, with the ice, and then we bring the oysters down to 40 degrees or lower, and we shoot them with a temperature gun. We shoot them after we first harvest them, we shoot them when we first put them in the slurry so we know what temperature they are, and when we pull them out of the slurry we shoot them to make sure they’re still 40 degrees or lower. From there they get transported into refrigeration where they remain at 40 degrees or under.”
The trio created two components – the G.E.I. Oyster Farm (for Great Egg Inlet), which is the farming venture, and the Ocean City Oyster Co., which is the retail portion at 720 Haven Ave. in Ocean City. The retail portion is where they are stored in refrigeration.
They sell oysters retail (curbside pickup twice a week), directly to restaurants and to wholesalers. (More information at oceancityoystercompany.com.)
Becoming oyster farmers
Schlembach started working on the venture five years ago when he came across an oyster farm on the eastern shore of Virginia. The pilot flew into an airport to do some instrument training for his pilot’s license, rented a car, stopped for lunch and noticed an oyster farm across the street that turned out to be HM Terry Co., Inc., Seaside Oysters & Clams. He went in and found Wec Terry, a third-generation member of the family business, and struck up a conversation.
“It was just so interesting,” Schlembach said. “I would fly in, do training, have lunch and talk to Wec. I just kept getting more interested in it and doing research. I eventually started applying for licenses.”
The rest he learned by doing research and talking to other oyster farmers.
Zammit said he knew Schlembach because their kids have been friends for seven or eight years.
“He had approached me one day and said, ‘How about making a run at this?’ We’ve had all sorts of things we’ve thought about doing but when he invited me to get involved, I thought, ‘Sure,’” Zammit said.
And what was Zammit’s sum total of knowledge about oyster farming before he got involved? “Zero,” he laughed, as Martin laughed along with him. “This is all part of the learning curve.”
He is pleased with their progress. “I think with us being new farmers that we’re doing pretty well. I’ve noticed a lot of interesting things,” and that includes the environment.
“Two and a half years ago when we first came out here, I noticed the base of the cove was a solid foot layer of muck, that black muck,” Zammit said. “I know for a fact, working out here, that this floating bag culture has changed the ecosystem of this cove. It’s now sandy down there. These grass shrimp were never around.” (Scores of tiny grass shrimp fell on the dock when Zammit and Schlembach hoisted the bags of oysters out of the water.)
“Every day that we’re out here there are millions of little fish and there are crabs back here. It’s just interesting to see how just a little bit of change can change the environment so drastically in a positive way,” Zammit said.
Oysters are bivalves that clean the water so they can be environmentally positive. Zammit, the science teacher, pointed out that is why there were oyster towers installed on Shooting Island – to help clean the water.
G.E.I. Oyster Farm, however, operates in certified clean water.
The business is a family affair that involves all members of Schlembach’s family, including wife Jennifer and son Aidan, and Zammit’s family, including wife Kathryn, daughter Zoe, stepson Joel Dougan and stepdaughter Emily Dougan, the partner.
Dougan, the 2006 OCHS grad who teaches physics and green engineering at Cape May Tech, has the most applicable background for becoming an oyster farmer.
“When Keith and Martin first started talking about the possibility of oyster farming they asked if I wanted to get involved and I jumped at the chance,” she said. “I’m a teacher … and have weekends and summers free so I couldn’t resist a chance to get back out to working on the water.”
When she talks about getting back on the water, the 2010 graduate of Barnard College, who has a bachelor’s degree in environmental science, means that literally.
“After college I interned on a few large research vessels in the North Atlantic Ocean, and then spent several years working as a marine science technician for the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences,” she said. “A lot of my job involved putting expensive scientific equipment down on the sea floor and then safely bringing it back up again, which surprisingly has translated extremely well to oyster farming. This type of work was never on my radar before. As a marine science tech I spent about six months a year out at sea, which got to be a little too much.”
Now Dougan has found a balance.
“As a teacher, I’m stuck on dry land. So oyster farming is really the perfect happy medium for me,” she said. “Oyster farming can be challenging at times, as we are constantly beholden to the wind, waves, tides and temperatures. But meeting those challenges, along with the scientific aspect of researching and trying new techniques, is extremely rewarding for me.”
Dougan hopes to grow the business and expand Ocean City Oyster Co.’s direct-to-consumer sales. All three partners share the workload for both the farm and retail companies. As part of her duties, she handles the website and social media, including Instagram@geioysterfarm.
“Oysters are such a sustainable seafood choice that are loaded with vital minerals and nutrients, and also improve the health of the waters in which they’re grown,” she said. “We also sell our oysters just minutes away from the water in which they’re grown. It doesn’t get any more local than that.”
She added she hopes to encourage people to “try a new adventure in the kitchen (shucking isn’t as hard as it looks!) and increase the consumption of local, sustainable, good-for-the-environment food.”
