Innovative Mussel Growing Prototype To Be Launched

It may be tough for old dogs to learn new tricks, but a thirst for knowledge has led a Hancock man with years of experience harvesting marine resources to invent a new way for growing mussels.

Norman Hodgkins describes himself as "a professional worm digger" who has worked the Hancock County flats for a decade. Before that, however, Hodgkins was a diver, harvesting scallops and sea urchins and that's really where the story of his novel mussel growing device begins.

About 10 years ago, while Hodgkins was diving, the fishing boat he owned spent most of its time sitting on the mooring. Like most boats that sit in salt water, its bottom became fouled with a lot of marine growth - algae, barnacles and tiny mussels. Unlike most boat owners, Hodgkins saw the fouling as more than just a mess.

"I had to clean my boat," Hodgkins said. "I scraped the mussels and they came off easily. I said, 'This would be a good way to grow mussels.'"

After more than four years of work with help from the University of Maine law school and the Maine Technology Institute, Hodgkins is going to find out if he was right. Within the next few weeks, he plans to launch a prototype of his unique mussel growing system into the waters of Frenchman Bay.

Hodgkins' prototype essentially consists of a series of 8-foot-long, 7-inch-high panels suspended horizontally below an 18-by-16-foot rectangular aluminum raft. The panels, about a quarter-inch thick, are made of fiberglass skins over an aluminum "skeleton" to hold down weight.

Hodgkins said that mussel spat (juvenile mussels) that are found in the water through most of the spring and summer will collect on the panels as they do on boats, buoy ropes and pilings. Once a sufficient number of spat have attached themselves, the panels can be allowed to hang vertically while the mussels grow to harvestable size.

If it works as he believes it will, Hodgkins' system will offer mussel growers several advantages. First, since the panels are just 8 feet long, they can be deployed from rafts set in relatively shallow water. Unlike operations that grow mussels on suspended long lines that generally require water depths of at least 80 to 100 feet, Hodgkins' rafts can be moored out of the way of fishermen and recreational boaters in water as shallow as 15 feet, "as long as there's good water flow and it's out of the southeasterly," he said.

According to Hodgkins, studies in Europe and elsewhere have shown that during the spring, spat are most abundant within 10 feet of the water's surface. Even long line systems collect most of the spat they use at shallow depths. Once the spat are collected, however, the long lines must be hung in deep water. That is laborious and time-consuming process that Hodgkins says his system eliminates.

"It does away with a lot of work," he said.

With the long line system, Hodgkins said, the spat collecting lines have to be hauled up for inspections. Then, once the spat are collected, they have to be stripped from the collection lines then placed in bags that have to be plaited into the lines on which the mussels will grow to market size.

With Hodgkins' system, the spat-covered horizontal panels are simply freed at one end and allowed to hang down vertically in the water. He estimated that the savings in time and labor would reduce the cost of growing mussels substantially.

"I'm guessing 40 to 50 percent," Hodgkins said, then he laughed. "I'll be conservative. It may be 30 percent."

Hodgkins estimated that each panel can grow 10 to 12 bushels of market size mussels. That's somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 pounds.

Hodgkins said the panels should be extremely productive as compared with long line systems. In his research he discovered that the upper 10 feet of the long lines tend to grow the highest concentrations of mussels per foot because that is where the water tends to have the highest levels of nutrients.

"Life's a never ending learning process," Hodgkins said. "I'm trying to learn."

Although he is responsible for the concept and design, Hodgkins said he receive a lot of help bringing his idea to fruition. Superior Welding & Fabrication, in Waltham, built the raft frame and Nautilus Marine in Trenton provided assembly space and built the panel skeletons. Both companies were extremely supportive, Hodgkins said.

He gave them credit for guiding him through the complex process of getting his invention patented. Hodgkins filed a patent application some two years ago and is still waiting for the final patent to be issued. (His patent has been approved by the U.S. Patent office and is currently pending.) According to Hodgkins, the university's help saved him $5,000 in legal expenses.

That hardly means that his invention came free. Much of the development work was financed by a $12,500 grant from the Maine Institute of Technology. Hodgkins was required to match that amount with his funds of his own and, he said, he has a lot more than just the match invested in the project.

So far, there are no definite plans to build Hodgkins' mussel systems on a production basis. Whether and how to proceed will depend on the outcome of the tests he will conduct over the next 18 months or so on Sorrento fisherman James West's Frenchman Bay mussel aquaculture lease site.

"I hope it works out," Hodgkins said. "I've got a lot of money invested in this thing. And a lot of studying."