After getting inquiries from over 30 people and interviewing 8 amazing folks, we hired our first sales leader--right as Covid shutdown the entire economy. 

Tough time to start, but Kam Kim is already a great addition to the team. He is smart, energetic, and will make sure we are well connected to the shellfish farms in the mid-Atlantic.  When this market rebound (and it will), he will be ready.  

Beyond getting a free trial, here is why you should meet Kam.

1) He managed one of Cherrystone's Farms on the eastern shore of Virginia--one of the largest farms on the east coast. From that experience, he has a deep appreciation of how successful farms run. 

2) He managed the farm at the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences (VIMs) for the last 3 years. There he was a client of Oyster Tracker for over a year. VIMs taught him how broodstock, nursery, and hatchery programs work and the deep importance of the science behind all we do. 

3) He was/will be again a bartender who loves to meet people and solve problems.

4) Most importantly, he is a natural born model and a great fisherman. 

You can reach Kam at Kam@oystertracker.com.

Please join us in congratulating him. 

Chip

Wow it is a crazy time.  I hope you and your families are well.  That is most important.

As I'm sure you know, Covid has been disastrous for shellfish farms. Restaurant sales have gone to zero and therefor almost all farm have no sales. Most farms are cutting expenses.

In response, we have given all our clients the next two months free. We always want to be a good partner with our clients and this is one small way we can do that.

We are also the eternal optimists and know that unlike some other industries/companies we are in a fortunate place.  Here are my data points.

1) You can meet demand when the market rebounds.  Oysters/clams/mussels can stay on the farm pretty much indefinitely. Once restaurants reopen farms will be able to meet demand. The optimistic scenario: 2 months of social distancing followed by a great summer.

2) We are building great solutions to real challenges:  We are well funded with a great team and clients in 10 states and 4 countries. Clients have been giving us strong directions. We are continually updating our farm management solution and our new tagging solution is coming soon. 

3) You can now try Oyster Tracker for free:  As you move into the busy season of planting new seed, splitting bags and generally getting the farm in shape we can help.  All farms will now automatically get a free two month trial. If it works for you and business bounces back great. If not, you can always export all your data to a spreadsheet. 

Bottom line:  Together we will come out of this stronger.  Please let us know what we can do to help you.  

The Oyster Tracker Team (Chip, Andy, Cat, Kam, Drew, and Rob)

An estimated 35,000 Americans got sick from Vibrio parahaemolyticus transmitted by shellfish--an increase 54% from 2006 to 2017.

At first glance really bad news, but:

1) The CDC estimates the percentage of unreported illnesses and scales up based on the reported cases. Better reporting leads to worse results. If historically consumers reported only 10% of cases, but today they report 30% the estimated number of illnesses would be a 300% increase--without any actual increase in disease.

2) Even ignoring the reporting issue, the industry grew way more than 54% over the last 10 years. On a percentage basis, the incidence of disease must be lower.

In other words, the percentage of shellfish consumers getting sick has declined. But even one sickness or death is too many. We should always be looking for improvements. Headlines like the above lead to more stringent regulations and a greater burden on the industry that may only add cost and not improve outcomes.

Having spent some time exploring the 489 page Model Ordinance and seeing what happens on farms, dealers and restaurants, I wanted to share with you our experience. As with many others, I think our current system is fine, but beginning to creak under a growing demand. Most notably the reliance solely on a paper based often handwritten system for tracebacks.

The shellfish traceability system relies a paper trail that let's regulators traceback through the supply chain in the event of an illness. Here is the general overview of how this works (note there are a lot of subtleties that I'm ignoring here).

1) Harvest Your Shellfish

You made sure the state hasn't closed the water for any sort of harmful algal bloom (which seem to be increasing everywhere). You comply with any Vibrio regulations--which mostly relate to getting the product on ice/refrigerated within a specified time.

2) Fill out your harvest tags

Depending on the state, you have to do one tag for every bag and at least part of the tag is usually done by hand. If your area has a vibrio compliance plan, you must include extra data.

3) Complete your other paperwork

Harvest log, vibrio logs, shipping labels, invoices and the like. Make sure you also file your harvest reports with the state every month (or annually in some state)

4) Dealers take over

  temperatures, wet storage and and the like. All while trying to read your handwriting.

Dealers replace your tags with their own, create a receiving log, keep track of

Depending on the supply chain route, this can happen numerous times between the farm and the plate.

5) Eventually the Restaurant

They are required to store tags for 90 days in chronological order. This is a typical storage system. When someone gets sick, regulators start here.

The result:

The average traceback takes over 4 weeks and over 50% of tracebacks fail because at some point in the chain the records are incomplete or unreadable.

In other words, despite spending thousand of hours and millions of dollars on compliance, the system seldom has the intended result of preventing others from getting sick.

We are in the midst of developing a solution to help farmers. What would you like to see?

The USDA just released a census of Aquaculture in the US.  As far as I can see, the data has some serious limitations--and it is not the fault of the USDA.  It was a voluntary survey and the results show that the majority of farms didn't return the surveys.  Here are a couple of highlights:

1) Alabama: USDA says there are 3 mollusk farms in Alabama.  Bill Walton of Auburn University count 22 farms.  I can list off 19 farms.  In other words, ~15% of the active farms Alabama are included.  

2) Maryland: USDA has 30 mollusk farms.  Matt Parker of Maryland Sea Grant counts over 100 leaseholders in Maryland. Roughly 30% of farms included.  In addition, there is one mystery farm in Maryland that sold over 23 million shellfish--more than the entire state reported in the previous year. 

3) Maine:   USDA has 42 mollusk farms. Maine Aquaculture Association counts over 190 farms. 22% of farms included.  

This by no means scientific, but my sample of three shows huge variations from reality (insert joke about Washington reality here).  

Although funny, it does matter.  Government support on issues like better crop insurance and disaster relief, support for research programs on better seed, policies on fair use of public waterways, and Jones Act exemptions all often hinge on the value of the industry.  If the government is significantly under counting the shellfish industry it really matter.  

Next time you get that survey?  Probably worth filling out. 

In 17th century Holland Tulips were the first modern market panic.  Overnight tulip values dropped to almost nothing and scores of people went bankrupt.  The question I get regularly is: Are we in a oyster bubble? 

I have no way of predicting the future, but here are some of the relevant data points.  

1) Production is way up:  This is the most obvious sign that we are in a bubble.

1. Production in Massachusetts is up 48% in the last 4 years.  
2. Maine has 74 full shellfish leases and over 540 Limited Purpose or Experimental leases--and all these leases can sell product commercially
3. Maryland went from 3,304 bushels in 2012 to 74,066 bushels of oysters in 2017
4. Virginia has seen a 300% increase in production in 10 years
5. North Carolina has 48 water column leases--up from 2 leases on 2011
6. Florida has 200+ leases and just permitted 90 more
7. Texas just started their aquaculture program
8. Washington State: Always strong continues to add new farms and grow existing
9. The Canadian government is really supporting the growth of the industry in the Maritime providence and British Columbia.
10. Mexico has increasing production on the Baja peninsula. 

2) Wild harvests continue to decline.  Especially most recently in the Gulf of Mexico.

3) Prices vary by region and over time.  Reports by farmers seem to point to the Fall being the worst for the Northeast as many smaller farmers sell off crop they don't want to hold over the winter. Others in Louisiana and elsewhere are reporting that they can't keep up with demand. I regularly hear that prices for high-quality half-shell oyster range from a low of $.30 to a high of $70/pc on the wholesale market.  For folks selling directly to restaurants, the price is often between $.60 and $1/oyster.   

4) Wholesalers/Distributors are doing great:  A major distributor in the Northeast reported that their business has been up 20% y/y for the last 10 years and more than 40% this year.  Real Oyster Cult--a direct to consumer business--has seem their business rise by over 100% in the last year.

5) Restaurants continue to push oysters.  They are a profitable item and tend to be paired with drinks--the most profitable items for a restaurant.

6) Global restaurant trends still support oysters: 

Hyper-local food is a hot trend according to 60% of chefs.  

Sustainable Seafood is a top trend for proteins

7) Folks are not getting sick:  Despite the occasional click-bait article, the number of reported illnesses is down on a per-capita basis.  

8) We are nowhere near our historic consumption:  In the 1890s, ~30% of the protein for the working class came from shellfish--today it is probably well less than 1%

So what should the oyster farmer do?  

1) Be an efficient producer:  If we do hit a drop, being able to produce oyster cost effectively will make all the difference.

2) Build strong relationships with your buyers:  Be the folks that are easy to work with.  Deliver a high-quality product on time as promised.

3) Save for a rainy day: Whether it is a hurricane, ice storm, or dropping demand, something will happen make sure you have savings to tide your over.  

Our waterways are stressed by excess nutrients--especially nitrogen and phosphate. Nitrogen and phosphate fertilizer fueled the "green revolution" that saw grain harvest double within 20 years.  This amazing revolution has fed millions and delivered beautiful green lawns to many.

However, roughly 50% of these nutrients run off into waterways. Numerous other nutrient sources like sewage, urban runoff and industrial sources add to the nutrient load.  Excess nutrients fuels algae blooms.  As the algae decays it sucks oxygen out of the water and we end up with dead waterways.  From Cape Cod  and the Chesapeake Bay, to Florida, and Puget Sound the results are not pretty. The EPA estimates 15,000 water bodies in the US are impacted.

Just spent a week out in Portland OR at the 73rd! Pacific Coast Shellfish Growers Association.  Really interesting.  Here are some of my takeaways.

1) The industry on the West Coast is different.  The farms are larger.  They have been in business for much longer (often generations).  They farm mostly Pacific (Gigas) Oysters, Clams and Goeducks. 

2) Like on the East Coast, there are a lot of really smart people working on specific problems.  Ocean Acidification, Green Crab Invasions....

3) Like on the east coast, most farms are moving towards container culture.  In most cases, they are using Flip Bags. There is a lot less floating gear except up in British Columbia.

4) There have been some significant die offs and there isn't always an obvious cause. But there are a lot of smart people working on it.

5) The export market is a lot more important. A significant amount of product leaves for Asia every day.  Tariffs have not helped.  

6)You learn a lot more at the bar than in the sessions!

Spent 4 days earlier this month visiting clients and prospects on Long Island.  Clearly this is a region on the rise.  The fresh water of the Atlantic flushes the Little and Great Peconic Bays creating ideal growing conditions. The communities are largely supportive. The farms can sell to great restaurants on Long Island or within a few hours they can have their product in NYC. No wonder the number of farmers and the size of the farms is growing.

The folks couldn't be nicer--The Burkes from Happy Oyster even put me up at their house for the night. Check out their hilarious YouTube channel.  

The farmers I met were often folks who had decided to move from desk jobs in NYC to become farmers. One had worked for tech startups. Another was an ex-art restorer. The Burke's had owned a bicycle shop. Others had left Wall Street. Some were multi-generation and still going strong.

The Long Island oyster thrived from before Europeans arrived until the early 20th century. But like many places, pollution and over-harvesting devastated the wild populations and much of the industry shut down. Today, new techniques, cleaner water, and new energy is bringing back this historic fishery. It is a good news story in a time when we need more uplifting media.  Thanks for all you do.

Oyster Tracker recently hit two big milestones--we raised money and hired our first Chief Technical Officer full time.  Having clients in 10 different states and 3 countries has taught us a lot. We now know a lot more about what the industry needs, what we should build and how we should support you.  With talent and money, we can bring our solution to the next level.

Our CTO is Andy Kearney.  Andy has been working nights and weekends to build our current product.  He is a talented engineer who most recently led a large engineering team at VRBO (a division on Expedia).  We have worked together in the past and I know we are incredibly lucky to have such a talented leader.  Andy works closely with Cat Ganim and Drew Condon our leaders of user experience and product.  Together they make a really capable team that will continue to make our product easier to use and more valuable. 

The investors in our company are what is known in this world as "smart" money. They see a big opportunity to help you all be more successful, but they know we need more than just money. We need support. Our investors range from institutions like Maine Venture Fund and Branch Ventures, to individuals who have a passion for aquaculture.  Two of the investors are active oyster farmers. One is a former marine biologist another runs the largest organic food distributor in the Northeast. Two are active CEOs of mid-size companies. Many have deep experience globally and in other aquaculture ventures. In other words, it is a great range of folks who will give us superb support. 

Bottom line:  This will be great for our clients.  We will continue to improve the product, add new solutions and provide the support they deserve.  

Thank you for all you have done so far.  We are eager to continue working with you.

Chip, Andy, Cat, and Drew