People Are Just Realising How Mussels Are Harvested, And It Feels Like Sci-Fi

Not since learning the tides don’t actually go in and out have I been so shocked by marine life. 

I don’t really know how I thought mussels were harvested ― I suppose if pushed, I would have guessed that people scraped them off rocks with a little blade. 

But upon watching sealife account @seaside.adv’s Reel on Instagram recently, it turns out it’s actually more like those machines that shake the oranges off trees. 

The mussels, which seemed to grow in slate stalagmites from the sea floor, weren’t lovingly plucked ― or even scraped off their homes. 

Instead, a large metal cage lowered itself down onto the column, lifting the shells up in one go to reveal very-much-man-made poles underneath. 

How are mussels farmed? 

Per the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Ocean Today podcast, one way of farming mussels is by putting them in a “sock.”

Baby mussel “seeds” (larvae) are collected by placing a rope near shore; the mini molluscs attach themselves to the rope. 

Those shell-packed strands are then placed into a “sock,” the rope’s ends held up by buoys.

The mussels in the “sock” spend a year growing in the ocean; then, they’re simply removed from the “sock” and harvested with a pull-through wheel which scrapes the mussels off the rope. 

But some areas of France, like Brittany, use a different method for their bouchot mussels. 

Instead of dangling the ropes into the sea, they wrap the “seed”-covered rope around bouchot stakes, which can hold up to 80kg of mussels, Brittany’s tourism site Bretagne reads.

These stand on the shore; “this way, the mussels are out of reach of crabs and other predators.” 

Those are the ones with the more sci-fi-style harvesting method.

How do mussels have “seed?” 

But farming-focused YouTube channel Noal Farm shared a “modern” form of aquaculture on a New Zealand farm.

They use “spat” (mussel “seed”) cultivated on-site in hatcheries, feeding tanks of the larvae algae until, after a few weeks, they’re moved outdoors to grow further. 

Of course “spat” occur naturally too.

“Spat” is “the term given to very young shellfish, which in their larval form float around in the surface layers of water until they come into contact with a suitable substrate to which they then attach themselves, using hair like structures called byssal threads,” The Fish Site reads. 

The more you know...