Dan Ward of Ward Aquafarms
By Doreen Leggett
Dan Ward of Ward Aquafarms has been growing oysters since 2012 and has experimented with a variety of other things over the years, bay scallops and sugar kelp for instance, and most recently tautog.
“I started oyster farming because that is what we can do, growing oysters and clams is viable,” Ward said. “I need to keep the lights on and once they are on, you can branch out.”
Ward was standing near two tanks of a few dozen rotini-size brown and black mottled fish in a back corner of a hatchery on the Pocasset River in Bourne. The hatchery, the second on the Cape, came online last year and was prompted by a need to grow more bay scallops; it came about by investing in a marina to help pay the bills.
Ward’s professional life has been a meld of practical and visionary, academic research and the business of fishing.
He grew up in the New Hampshire woods but was always interested in marine biology, graduating from University of Rhode Island in 2005.
Back in New Hampshire, he worked on commercial lobster and fishing boats, struck by how one experienced captain was putting in a lot of work for not a lot of money. Ward wasn’t sure that was the path he wanted to follow.
“I wasn’t sure about the future,” he said.
At the time, the captain was involved in an open-ocean aquaculture experiment working with the University of New Hampshire. Started in 1999, the project has grown summer flounder, halibut and Atlantic cod in submerged cages.
Ward said he began to see a future in aquaculture and went on to get his masters, then doctorate in the field.
He moved to the Cape close to 15 years ago, living in Falmouth with his wife and two children, and decided to use his scientific and academic background to help his business, also aquaculture as a whole.
“I felt I could have a better impact on the industry – I can use research to help,” he said.
His first farm was a 2.6-acre site in Megansett Harbor in Falmouth and he ran into a major problem to research right away: Harmful algal blooms.
The area was prone to rust tide, not harmful to humans but harmful to shellfish.
With help from other researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and funding from the USDA, Ward helped develop the tools to utilize an in-water microscope (IFCB, Imaging Flow CytoBot) to mitigate the impact of the harmful algae on shellfish in nursery systems.
Images taken by the IFCB are sent to a server, and the concentration of algae, which is calculated, is used as a trigger to shut off a hatchery or upweller pump if the algae numbers reach a certain limit. Promptly shutting off the pump can protect the crop.
Michael Brosnahan, a scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution whose lab focuses on harmful algae blooms, worked with Ward on improving the tool, and says Ward’s background blend of business and scientific study makes him a “wonderful collaborator”.
“He does bridge that divide,” Brosnahan said. “(Ward) is very much a farmer and is really invested in all levels of the production of shellfish and the development and commercialization of new species – and he has the research background.”
Ward is also a valuable resource as Brosnahan uses his aquaculture farm as part of a network where they deploy sensitive sensors that measure and track the various microscopic marine algae.
“We call it Phytoplankton TV,” Brosnahan said.
They are also using the technology in the hatchery to help develop richer records of what happens with a spawn – figuring out what teeny-tiny algae are being consumed is better suited for artificial intelligence, rather than the human eye.
The information gleaned from the research is shared out.
“We are really keen to make it open source and available to the public and Dan is always open to that,” Brosnahan said.
With Ward’s goal of increasing domestic seafood production in the United States and diversifying the number of species cultivated, he has focused on bay scallops.
He pointed out many people think all shellfish are grown the same way. The reality is far different.
Ward said he and his team immediately noticed two issues in the first year of bay scallop culturing. Both stemmed from the same upweller system used to grow oysters. Bay scallops, which can swim, escaped the silo and when mesh was put over the pipe, it cut down on water flow and food availability. Ward also noticed that when scallops grow, they use propulsion to swim and, as they opened and closed their shells, they cut into one another, called “knifing.”
In 2015, Ward and his team developed their first downweller system, which reversed the direction of flow, also adding trays to give the scallops more room.
His quest with bay scallops brought about his partnership with Jeff Lang, who lives in Harwich. The two started Scallop Bay Marina in 2020.
Lang has a similar origin story to Ward, but his path diverged, then came full circle with the help of Ward.
When he was in college in the 1970s, Lang wanted to go into marine biology and took an interest in aquaculture. He ended up working for the Tennessee Valley Authority on an aquaculture project. Lang said he discovered that his job was focused on writing grants for projects he didn’t necessarily believe in.
“I hated working for the government,” he said simply.
Lang went to work in his family’s pet food business, which in later iterations launched Rachel Ray’s pet food line. When that sold to Smucker’s about five years ago, he had some time.
He went back to what he was interested in and took an aquaculture class in 2018, which toured a few grants, including Ward’s.
They got talking shellfish and hit off.
“He showed me the bay scallops. They were just so cute. They were sitting there clapping,” Lang said, referring to how scallops out of water will still try and swim, but without water they sound like a happy audience. “I really loved the research he had been doing on bay scallops.”
About a year later, Ward called him up with a business proposition: Since bay scallop seed wasn’t a priority at hatcheries, why didn’t they make it one?
“I said, ‘I’m in.’ Dan’s opportunity to start a new business just fascinated me,” Lang said.
They bought Bucky Barlow’s Boatyard, built the hatchery and renamed the place Scallop Bay Marina.
Ward said they start growing algae in October, when different cultures of algae arrive. The first spawns happen in January, he said, adding they also grow, and sell, oyster and quahog seed to towns and other growers. Their goal is 30 million animals this upcoming season and thus far the annual seed production has been about half that, Ward said.
“There is such a shortage of seed in New England,” he said. “We are oversubscribed without advertising.”
When they opened they became one of two hatcheries on the Cape, the other being Aquaculture Research Corporation, ARC, in Dennis. Although demand is high, Ward doubts there will be another hatchery on the Cape, noting a 50-year span between when ARC started and when Scallop Bay launched. And while his hatchery was gearing up, the marina was paying the bills.
As far as they know, they are the only ones raising bay scallops in this manner in this region, although there are farmers interested in branching out and trying bay scallops all throughout the east coast.
The two decided on a two-pronged effort: Some bay scallops, grown to market size, would be for restaurant sale in the summer, not the fall when the wild fishery opens. The rest would help Cape towns with propagation.
Last year, they sold scallops through Island Creek Oysters to high-end restaurants in New York and other cities. Demand surpassed supply and they are working on ramping up, looking to add machine-shucking to the business plan.
Towns, which didn’t need full-size scallops for their programs, started reaching out.
“So many towns want to reinvigorate the native population,” Lang said.
Towns including Yarmouth, Bourne and Falmouth have benefitted from Ward’s experimental work; Yarmouth bought 100,000 seed for a pilot program in Bass River.
Ward identified what size mesh was best for growing bay scallops in “lantern nets,” a vertically stacked structure, and why lantern nets work in the first place, as well as what size scallops should be for best survivability.
Lang and his wife Sandy Wycoff have a house on Herring River in Harwich and their docks serve as a grow-out location. There are four hatches between floating docks above hanging lanterns where scallops grow. They also have a grow-out spot in Buzzards Bay.
Ward and Lang have been thinking ahead. They want to expand operations to another property in Harwich and are going through the permitting process, running into some opposition from neighbors.
Ward said concerns about being able to have a business on the shore was why he has two marinas to protect his aquaculture business, the other is in Wareham.
“It comes down to access. We need water, and parking, and neighbors that are used to commercial activity,” he said.
New space at the marina has been a draw for researchers. They are now looking at the effects of pH and impacts of ocean acidification, which varies naturally and with climate change, on the reproductive ability of bay scallops.
There is a short lull in the hatchery world in late summer and early fall when Ward does maintenance and waits to start his algae again. He was moving his mini-tautog to the next phase of research, a larger area with different types of artificial structures, to identify fish preferences.
Ward said there is a high demand for the tasty, white tautog that can’t be met by the wild fishery. Ward has eaten tautog on the Cape: “They were expensive and they were fantastic.
“We are trying things out that might work,” he said. “You don’t want to just produce one crop.”