- Sustainably farmed mussels
may be the perfect food. They're healthy, delicious, and they filter the water
around them as they grow, meaning everyone wins. The problem is they're cheap, they're heavy, and they require a lot of labor, so it's hard to sell them at a profit. One of the ways it's done
is by creating mussel farms on giant mussel rafts in
the middle of the ocean which protect the mussels from predators and make harvesting more efficient. So today I'm out in Portland, Maine to find out how Bangs Island Mussels uses high tech machinery and organization to turn this highly
sustainable protein source into a legitimate business. The day starts at 5:00 a.m., when the morning team
gets into load the boat up with ice and mussels from
the previous day's harvest that need longer to grow. From there, they set out to one of
their six sites in Casco Bay to start the long process of getting mussels out of the water and into the hands of
chefs across the country. (upbeat techno music) So what is a mussel raft? - It's a 40 by 40 foot square that floats in the water year round, and we actually hang mussel lines from the raft into the water and the mussels actually grow
on those lines on those ropes. - [Daniel] That's these? - Each one of these
ropes is full of mussels. - Okay. - So let's take a peek. Oh yeah. - That's awesome. - Yeah, they're kinda heavy. Here we go. These are almost market
ready Bangs Island Mussels. - Okay, so obviously like, one of the things you guys have to do is make new lines constantly. - Yeah. First step in the process is seeding. So we'll take one of these lines, cover with mussel seed
and put it in the water. - [Daniel] Bangs Island creates new lines of mussels in two ways. They drop empty lines once a
year during spawning season and more commonly they create
lines out of tiny seed mussels and mussels that are too small to be sold. So this is the mussel seeder. Essentially you put little guys in here and we make mussels sausage? - It's pretty much that simple. So we've already got an empty line here which we refer to as a fuzzy rope 'cause it's nice and fuzzy. Has a lot of texture. That's great stuff that the
mussels like to byss onto. It gives them a lot of surface area. We'll load on our cotton sock, which is why this is referred
to as a socking machine. This will encompass the
mussels around the line. - All right, let's get 'em down there. - All right, that sounds great. (machine whirring) - [Daniel] That is so cool. - And over time, this cotton will biodegrade. It's basically just a temporary encasing so that the mussels have time to send out their byssal thread, their beards, their roots if you will. - [Daniel] Right. - Adhere to that line, cotton biodegrades away and
the mussels take its place. - Would you use this for
other shellfish as well? - For mussels only because mussels only grow the byssal threads, beards. - Is that part of what makes
mussels so efficient to grow? - Absolutely. The whole system is designed to have the mussels hold
themselves on the line. So it becomes very efficient. You can do a lot of quantity
in a small space in short term. - Pinch it off. - [Daniel] It really is sausage. - Absolutely. And then we let it go. This is what takes mussel
farming to the next level. It's a way to control our density. It's a way to create consistent
sizing throughout the year, which is what we try to strive for. - [Daniel] All right, so this is the moment
we've been waiting for. We're gonna pull some
mussels out of the water. - Yes we are. So we're taking our slide
right now off the boat. We're gonna set it up between
the raft and the boat. So we have a nice, smooth
platform to haul the mussel lines from the raft onto the boat. So the first step is clip the hauling line to the mussel line so
you don't lose a line, and then you untie it from
the raft and let it all fall. Gets hauled up just like that. (upbeat music) - We got mussels! - Yeah. This is almost exactly what we wanna see. We wanna see a lot of mussels that are the same size and big. So this is our ideal mussel
size for Bangs Island Mussels. You can sort of see the difference here. Like big mussel, little mussel. These ones are too small. These will go back in the water. - Right, so this mussel will go back in the seeder that we've already seen. - Absolutely, and it'll grow
to be harvested another day. - So what else is going on the rope? - Each mussel line is like
its own little ecosystem. So these have been
hanging out in the water. These have been growing for
two years or over two years. So not only do we have
some really fantastic, big ass mussels, sorry, big mussels on here. - [Daniel] Big ass mussels is fine. - All right. But we also have the other organisms that have been growing along with it. So we have some ascidians, also known as sea squirts, barnacles, here are some algae. There's a lot of things
that grow in the water. So you never get like a
perfectly clean mussel. That's why all this gear is important. It makes it nice, and clean, and pretty, and ready for market. All right. So I'm gonna turn this on. The hauler's gonna spin. The mussels are gonna
come up and if you want, you can help sort of
push 'em off the line. - So you wanna push even before
they get to the stripper? - Yeah. - Gotcha. - It just helps. Here we go. - Okay. - Oh, yeah. That was it. You did a great job though. Nice job. This is what we started with. This is the raw product. There's all kinds of mud. Yeah, all kinds of sea
squirts, small mussels. And then we have all this fancy gear to help us make nice
clean, market ready mussels at the end of the day. - All the weird stuff
that's goin' on here kind of makes me feel like there's more earth than life in the mussels. - It's a dynamic environment. It's full of life. Exactly, you know what I mean? If there was not a lot
growing on these mussels they probably wouldn't be
growing very good mussels. So it goes up the conveyor belt. All this stuff is specifically
built for our farm. Then it feeds into the declumper, which is as simple as it sounds. It's a machine that declumps mussels. Breaks up the clumps. That's the result. Individual mussels. The idea is they're
all broken up and clean but the mussels themselves aren't broken. This is our vibrating size grader. So obviously vibrates and
moves the mussels along and grades them by size. So the small ones, the seed falls through and
the market size mussels, we put into insulated bins. - [Daniel] So whatever falls through here, we're putting back in the
water and in our socks? - [Matt] Yeah, we're
gonna sock 'em back down to the sausage, exactly. (upbeat music) - [Daniel] So like a typical day on the boat is you come out, you say I need 10 bins or I need 20 bins? - Yeah, exactly. Today we need probably 10 of
these and another 10 totes. It's a volume game with mussels, 'cause they don't cost a lot. You have to do a lot of them. So we really need all this automation and this crew to be able
to do the volume that works for our business to make
a business out of it. - [Daniel] Can you actually
eat them in this stage? - [Matt] Yeah, you wanna eat some? - Yeah, I would eat one, yeah. - All right, let's do it, okay. So you basically take
it and you slide it in. You kinda have to cut the
mussel in half as you do it. Then you can open it up. Kinda messy. There we go. Yeah. - It's kinda like a richer, more briny oyster. - Exactly. Like fattier, creamier, right? Yeah. - [Daniel] That's really good. - [Matt] They're really good. - It's probably a pain in
the ass for a restaurant to do that but I guess they could, I guess they could do that. - They could. - It's just like when you cook 'em, they open and they're like, "Eat me!" - Perfect, yeah exactly. - This isn't as inviting. - Exactly. - [Daniel] So we've still
got a lot to do today. - [Matt] We're halfway,
we're halfway there. - [Daniel] It's time to go back inside and process these mussels
to get 'em outta here. - [Matt] Absolutely. - [Daniel] From here, team brings the day's hall back
to the processing facility, where they have to take the beards off, polish, and pack the
mussels for distribution using another line of
super high tech machinery. - Okay, so this is the final processing, where we take the beards off, inspect, pack, bag, weigh, and ship. - Let's clean some mussels. - Yeah, load it in. All the way, nice. Well done. - That's really satisfying. Let's go. (laughing) (mussels crashing) Okay, so from here, the mussels are just being
loaded through this hopper. This is just transfer, right? This isn't actually doing anything? - [Matt] Exactly, yep. Just transfer onto the conveyor. - [Daniel] And the first step
in this process is debyssing? - Yep, it's actually
conceptually pretty simple. There's a series of rods that have teeth and they spin against each other. They grab the byssal
threads and flip it off. It makes all the difference in the world. I mean, we could not
do this by hand at all. It just does not work. This is the beard
separated from the mussel. It's just all kinds of
fibrous stuff in there. - [Daniel] The beards
of a thousand wizards. - That's right. So once they've been
debyssed or debearded, they flow down onto the
inspection conveyor, where we have several people standing on either side picking
through all the mussels to make sure only the best
get through to our customers. It takes a lot of work to do this step. They have to be really
diligent and focused. So we're looking for a few things. We're looking for anything
that's cracked, broken, anything that's dead or open, and then anything that's too ugly, right? - [Daniel] I love conveyor belts so much. - I mean, it makes all the
difference in the world. Can you imagine doing all these steps without any conveyors in between 'em? The beginning of the company, we did that and we took a place
of a conveyor by shoveling. We would shovel all the mussels
in between the machines. - [Daniel] So you were much slower. - Yeah, way slower. The mussels, after they've been inspected, fall on the table. We'll do a final hand grade to
weed out any sub-market size. They'll fall through the
grates and be reseeded later. You can't take too long 'cause we have several
thousand pounds to get through. - All right, you're
saying I was being slow. - Yeah, too slow, too slow. (upbeat music) - [Daniel] So this is a
pretty fancy lookin' piece of machinery here. - Yeah. This is the automatic bagger,
weigher, and conveyor. - Okay. - Mussels go into the hopper. Then they come up the belts. Two belts on this conveyor. One for the big, one for the little. So this is the gross weight. It fills a lot fast. Then this is the fine adjustment, which, you know, fine tunes the actual weight. Load up the bag right here and then release it with this bar and the appropriate amount
of mussels fall into the bag. (machine whirring) (mussels clacking) - Thank you. Should we go cook up some mussels? - [Matt] Yeah, let's do it. - [Daniel] Wine, butter. Plenty of butter. Shallots, garlic, simple, classic. - So yeah, we have some beautiful Bangs
Island Mussels right here. You'll notice they're
larger than average size. What you don't see right
now and you will see soon is the huge meat yield. That's a tribute to the
way we grow the mussels. But also the sites that we have. They're just very special. Oh, look at that. These babies are hot. - [Daniel] Okay, so this
is what you're looking for. You want want the meat pulled
away from the shell like this. - [Matt] Absolutely. - [Daniel] These are aliens. - [Matt] These are monsters. Cheers. - Cheers. - All right. Mm. - Yeah, I think that's just
the best mussel I've ever had. - That's amazing. It's sweet. - [Woman] Yeah, it is. - [Matt] Yeah. - It's just, I can't imagine how you would
eat something like this, especially coming from you guys, and not see that you're, that it's just such like a good thing for the world and it's delicious. - I couldn't agree more. (laughing) - Thank you so much for having us today. Touring us around. - It's my pleasure. Thanks for joining us. So these mussels have been declumped. - I can't tell you how much
declumped sounds like Yiddish. (laughing) - Nuts, okay, yeah. - I've been declumped. - You're declumped, yeah. - What happened to him? He was declumped. (laughing) - [Matt] I love it.
Mussels are so cheap I would happily pay a premium for large, clean, de-bearded ones that were sustainably farmed.
Never had mussels before, but I still ended up watching the whole thing
I eat mostly plant based foods for ethical / environmental reasons but I find no reason why mussels would be an environmental hazard after watching this and doing a bit more research
How do you grow the mussels? Well first we get these mussels...
I know nothing on the topic, but would mussel's filtering the water around them make them less healthy to eat potentially?
'meaning everyone wins!' except, you know, the mussel.
Always good to see Maine aquaculture getting good press! My oyster farm is a couple miles away from these guys. They're awesome! Shout out to my buddy, Joey, for getting that sweet drone footage.
I love mussels, but I had my worst ever food poisoning from them though. It was my bad from eating one that had not opened properly. raaaaa all night lol
Great watch and well done, thanks for posting this!