June 12, 2014 — The conditions at the dock at the T Wharf early Wednesday morning were calm and pleasant, but the waves picked up in the quickening tide as Bill Lee motored the 44-foot Ocean Reporter out through Rockport Harbor and off toward Ipswich Bay.
“This is a little sloppier than we’d like, but we’ve been in worse,” said Mark R. Fregeau, a professor of marine biology at Salem State University. “You should have seen it in February.”
Lee is piloting the Ocean Reporter toward Hodgkins Cove, to a patch of open water and a tiny stretch of aquaculture that might hold the key to growing domestic mussels in open U.S. waters.
The project, started in 2006, first centered on determining the best type of gear and the optimum setups for cultivating mussels on an enormous scale, as well as learning about the shellfish’s spawning cycle and how to seed the lines.
In 2012, with the help of a $65,000 grant from NOAA, it began looking at the intricacies of developing a federal permitting process for mussel culture, and engaging local fishermen in the project.
Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times