www.shellfishgarden.com

I've been developing our tidelands on Vashon Island with oysters and mussels. I bought trivalves and med mussels from Taylor's in June and have them suspended in the Spanish pouches at zero tide. The biggest part of the project is gathering mussel "volunteers" and placing them in 1/2" mesh tubes suspended from 4" PVC pipe 5' long and hammered two feet into the sand. I've surrounded each pole with 40" garden fencing about one foot from the pole and zip tied to 2" PVC posts to keep the birds away. I have 4 poles now with 4 sacks tied to each pole. I experimented two years ago with a different arrangement and lost about 90 lbs of sorted mussels to some dag gone birds in about three days.
I have also strung about 100' of mesh tubing at a strategic level to catch spaun as these mussels do their thing.
I have to tell you that I look forward to low tides so I can keep working on these bi and trivalves.

B Dearborn

This sounds like a very interesting project! Are you using only Mediterranean mussels, or also the native trossulus mussel (you mentioned volunteers)?
-
Were the birds scooter ducks? I ask because if they have already migrated north you may not need the fencing until after the summer when they return.
-
I would love to see photos posted of your operation. It sounds very innovative!

OK 2nd try. See photos from July. Area in foreground is Med mussels and Pacific trivalves in grow bags.

This is very Cool! Your mussel set-up looks like it works great. How much can you produce from each post?

I have not posted in a while. I continued the gathering project until I have 10 posts with 4 4-6 lb socks per post.
I am going to the beach for a preliminary harvest tomorrow (Sat Sep 5) if I can get there - it'll be a 1.5' tide. I will report the quantity and condition of one of the socks. I will probably not be able to examine the oysters and the Med mussels, but the trossulus should be ready - bein's it's an R month.