Resources Database

Provides a summary of direct and indirect environmental factors that may affect your site selection for your marine aquaculture business.

A brief overview of what aquaculture is, why people do it, and how people do it in Maine.

Good husbandry is critical to success and this gives a general overview of its importance.

General overview about kelp farms, kelp markets, and kelp food options.

Reviews the keys to running a successful business; the four P's of marketing, wholesale distributors, risks, and sales.

Report on the mud blister polychaete worm, Polydora websteri, including a description, life history, settlement, burrowing, treatments, and biosecurity.

A 6-part tutorial on culturing economically valuable seaweeds for New England and a visual companion to the Handbook for Seaweed Culture in New England.

Details how to set up a seaweed nursery including how to make seawater media, temperature and light parameters, biology, cultivation, and culture systems.

Intended to help prospective farmers to identify, record, monitor, and manage production hazards, and ultimately minimize production-related risk. Discusses types of risk in aquaculture, record keeping, environmental conditions, biofouling organisms, predators, diseases, parasites, invasive species, and operational procedures.

ShellGIS is a desktop-based software tool that, for the choice of 14-commonly cultured shellfish species, enables dynamic predictions of shellfish production, environmental effects, and profitability according to culture practice and site selection within a given GIS domain.

Fact sheet designed to try to improve the growers knowledge on the process to contact a professional who can examine dead or dying shellfish to determine the cause and how to get the shellfish to them for analysis.

This brochure reviews safe handling, storage, and cooking practices that shellfish consumers should follow to prevent illness.

An in-depth guide on kelp farming including how to set up a farm, the application process, nursery set-up, maintaining cultures, and farm site operations.

Focuses primarily on the environmental sustainability of shellfish aquaculture including resource enhancement, habitat restoration, eutrophication, the impacts of farms on water quality, and harvest methods.

Reviews harmful algae blooms including conditions for biotoxin formation, detection, management, and common types of HAB's in the northeast.

Overview of mussels nutritional value and their biology.

Use this to create your own farm-specific Best Management Practices (BMP) document use this template, a Microsoft Excel file in macro format.

Overview of popular finfish and shellfish aquaculture systems (husbandry & gear) used in the northeast including bottom culture, near bottom culture, water column culture, surface culture, hatchery land-based systems.

A brief introduction to current commercial production species, potential commercial species, and experimental species including the hard clam (quahog), eastern oyster, blue mussel, softshell clam, macroalgae, bay scallop, European oyster, surf clam, sea scallop, and more.

Slideshow summarizing the regulations for shellstock and shucked shellfish handling, sanitation, tagging, and labeling for the state of Maine

Reviews the importance of recording growth and environmental data, estimating number of seed, and provides template data sheets to record this information.

If you're thinking about farming mussels, either as a sideline or the main chance, this booklet is designed to help you make decisions.This booklet reviews mussel raft culture in the Gulf of Maine, The Mussel Raft Project, Predators, storms and moorings, Mussel biology, Selecting a site, Steps in culturing mussels, Outreach, applied research, Sales and marketing , Getting into business, Planning a mussel business, Training and information, Leases and permits, Suppliers, and provides further reading suggestions.