Aquaculture Oyster Technician

Job description

Farm-raised oysters are different than wild oysters in that everything that is harvested has been planted by the oyster farmer one or two years before harvest instead of hunter/gathered by wild
fishermen from naturally occurring oyster reefs. Farming shellfish is the same as farming on lands and thus clearly spelled out in the Agriculture Marketing Act, listed as a classification under “Farm-raised fish” as NAICS 112512 Shellfish Farming.

Our farm creates oyster seed by setting oyster larvae on oyster cultch in setting tanks on land and then growing the resulting seed out in our nursery on our docks for several months. This seed production occurs each year and while the baby oysters are small, ten million baby oyster larvae can fit in the palm of your hand. At the start of it’s lifecycle, the oyster begins in our nursery. The seed doubles in size weekly until it’s ready to plant in the field when it’s about the size of a dime. The next stage is husbandry. Husbandry is the broad term for the care, tasks, and work that it takes to care for the oysters as they grow. The deployment of the seed, the constant splitting of the growing oyster seed into more and more cages, and then redeployment. Our operation has approximately 7000 cages, some float and some sit on the bottom. As the oysters continue to grow in those cages, workers will go about half a mile offshore in our workboats to gather up our cages and floats onto the workboat and bring those cages/floats back onto shore for processing at our dock. The majority of all our workload is processing on the dock, whether for husbandry or harvest. Workers will unload floats and cages from our workboats onto our dock. They will then empty those cages/floats to size and grade the oysters in like sizes and convey those different ranges of sizes back into different cages that are then redeployed to the water or harvested. The consistent splitting, sizing and redeployment of the oysters helps to prevent overcrowding and encourages faster growth.
Workers will participate in the entire oyster lifecycle starting with acceptance of the nearly microscopic product from an oyster hatchery and ending with packaging of finished product. Beginning stage oysters will be grown in individual silos in our nine nursery tanks on the dock once the water temperature meets or exceeds 50degrees F. As the oysters grow, nursery duties include using a bubble tank and vibratory shaker to separate and group oysters by size. Different strains of oysters received from the nursery will also have to be kept separated from each other. During this phase, daily cleaning of the nursery tanks, silos, water supply/discharge are all crucial tasks. Once large enough, oysters are moved out of the nursery tanks and placed by workers into tight mesh bags and cages. They are then placed into either bottom or floating wire cages. Duties during this phase include: working from a boat, ragging oyster bags to and from boat. Cleaning boat. Perform supervised boat maintenance duties. Use tumbler to mechanically sort oysters by size. Sort out dead oysters. Stand on bottom and work in water approximately 4 feet deep. Clean bags and cages. Install buoys and marking poles. Once oysters have been deemed “market” size, workers duties will include: removing oysters from cages and returning them to the dock. Manually count oysters for packaging. Pack boxes of oysters of varying count size. Make boxes. Load pallets use pallet jack. Lift/carry up to 80lbs; bags of oysters weigh as much as 80lbs. Some oysters will be shucked rather than packaged in the shell. Workers will shuck oysters, clean and package as well as clean the shucking facility. Other task include: Use tools such as pneumatic wire cutter to build and maintain gear for the entire operation.

Special Requirements

Persons seeking employment in this position must be available for the entire period requested by the employer. All workers will be subject to a training period of up to ten days during which the employer will evaluate workers' performance of required tasks. Employer reserves the right to terminate a worker if the employer reasonably finds worker's performance during the trial period to be unacceptable. Employer reserves the right to discharge an obviously unqualified worker, malingerer or recalcitrant worker who is physically able but is unwilling to perform the work necessary for the employer to grow a premium quality product, or for any other lawful reason. The employer may discipline the worker, including brief suspension of work activities/employment for a set period determined by the supervisor or termination of employment.