May 18: Preparing Nursery Rafts

What’s Going on in the Tisbury Shellfish Department

 May 18: Preparing Nursery Rafts

Quahog production requires a good deal of preparation and hard work, much of it behind the scenes on dry land. Last week, Tisbury Shellfish Constable Danielle Ewart and assistant constables Fred Benson and Nelson Sigelman spent several hours behind the Tisbury DPW facility preparing quahog nursery rafts for the water.

The rafts are essentially plywood trays that will be filled with sand and suspended in the water column by floats. Approximately 100,000 seed quahog provided by the Shellfish Group shellfish hatchery will be “planted” in each tray. Suspending the trays provides protection from crabs and birds. Once the seed grows to a size where it is capable of burying itself in the sand it will be sprinkled in town waters to grow to harvestable size.

In the next few weeks the bulk of the rafts will be transported to the Lagoon.