After years of studying the increasingly devastating effects of microplastics in the world’s oceans, Maine-born scientist Abby Barrows was ready to return to her home waters. Searching for a side gig to keep her connected to the ocean, she bought the lease for an oyster farm on Deer Isle, Maine (southwest of Bar Harbor).
But when she saw the mess of plastic gear that came with the farm, the side gig became something else entirely. “We’re putting thousands of pounds of plastic gear, if not millions of pounds of plastic gear, into the Gulf of Maine,” Barrows recounted to Patagonia. “We need to change how we are growing our food.”
Today, Deer Isle Oyster Co. is a thriving family business and a testing ground for plastic-free aquaculture gear. This is the story of a season on the farm and an uncertain but promising future for an industry with huge impacts on the health and productivity of our oceans.
“The fisheries here are dramatically changing and so are the generations of knowledge of the ways of the water,” Barrows added. “Oyster farming hit a bunch of bases—working out on the water, growing food, cleaning and filtering water, and modeling what a sustainable fishery could look like for this community.”
Barrows and her husband launched their three-acre oyster farm (where they also grow sugar kelp) nine years ago. In 2021 they began to move toward plastic-free aquaculture gear. Most oyster farmers use plastic mesh bags to grow their crop; Deer Isle Oyster Co.’s new gear is aluminum, cedar and rubber, with “MycoBuoys” made of mushroom mycelium and plant byproducts. Soon the couple hope to make the designs for their plastic-free gear open-source and accessible to other farmers.
We Can Get There From Here documents the journey and mission of a family inspiring change in the seafood industry and making a sustainable future for working waterfronts with a model that doesn’t deplete but instead restores and builds resilience.
More about Deer Isle Oyster Co. and the film here.
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