From Facebook Feed to Shellfish Farm: An intern’s journey
By Stephanie Murphy
On a rainy December morning, I sat inside a small trailer in a gravel lot in Fairhaven. The trailer belongs to Dale Leavitt, whose oyster farm extends for 47 acres just off shore of the lot. We are on a little spit of an island between Fairhaven proper and a road that extends onto West Island, more than half of which is a state reserve and where summer homes sit vacant on this cold and damp early winter morning.
Around the side of the trailer are stacks of oyster cages waiting to be mended, storage sheds, and other farm gear in a narrow yard that overlooks the Bay. Across the street, just beyond a small waterfront restaurant, is an oyster processing barge where the farm gets most of its work done.
“It's a pretty impressive operation,” WHOI Sea Grant marine extension agent Rachel Hutchinson tells me when we meet up. Rachel and her Marine Team colleagues regularly interact with Dale and his crew at Blue Stream Shellfish, home of the West Island Oyster.
Inside, the trailer is warm and cozy. Dale is there with his farm manager, Travis Ortega, and farm worker Alicia Perez. It’s really Alicia we’re there to talk to. She is an intern placed with the aquaculture farm as part of a training program being trialed by the WHOI Sea Grant Marine Team and Danny Badger, their counterpart at MIT Sea Grant. The program is meant to help bring new workers into Massachusetts’s growing shellfish farming industry.
“Coming out of academia, I have mentored interns for many, many years,” says Dale, who retired as an Emeritus Professor from Roger Williams University, “so it was just sort of a no-brainer when Danny and Abigail and the Sea Grant crew proposed it. I said, ‘Sure, happy to take somebody on.’”
“And it’s worked out very well,” adds Dale. “So, I can stand here and embarrass Alicia, and tell you what a great addition she’s been to the crew.”
When asked how she heard about the internship program, Alicia responds, “I was just looking for work, and then a flyer came up on my social media feed about the Sea Grant program. I didn’t even know it was about oysters. I was like, ‘I’m just going to go for it and apply.’”
The program, Rachel tells me, includes a week of virtual training through the East Coast Shellfish Growers Association certification program and the OSHA-10 workplace safety course. Then the interns have one week of hands-on, in-person training at Wildlands Trust in Plymouth with Rachel, Danny and WHOI Sea Grant Marine Team members Abigail Archer and Josh Reitsma. The training included shellfish biology, knot tying, water safety, boat handling, and time to talk with people already working in the industry in various positions like shellfish wardens, seafood delivery truck drivers, farm owners, and farm workers. To give the interns exposure to different aspects of the industry, each intern then works a three-week rotation at three different farms, hatcheries or town shellfish operations.
A few weeks after applying, Alicia says, “Danny [Badger] reached out to me, letting me know that I was one of the ten interns that got picked, and then here we are!”
Before coming to work at Blue Stream Shellfish, Alicia did rotations at a hatchery and a shellfish farm on Martha’s Vineyard. “The hatchery was really cool, but I feel like that wasn’t really me. It was more like slow stuff and more biology stuff. And that’s not really my specialty,” she says. “I’ve always been a person that likes to be outside, likes to be out in nature and stuff like that. I like doing the more hands-on stuff and that’s what this is a lot of.”
“All of her intern mentors were pleased with Alicia and would have hired her on the spot,” Rachel says. “Yeah, they all wanted her back!” laughs Dale, clearly pleased to have been chosen.
“I would say this farm is more local for me, so it’s easier,” says Alicia, who is from New Bedford. “And everybody’s great here. I get along with everybody.”
Alicia’s day-to-day at Dale’s farm is mostly shore-based and semi-shore-based. It can include working on the oyster barge – a large floating oyster processing station moored across the road from the trailer – sorting and cleaning oysters, taking bags from the sorting machine and packaging and icing them. She also helps keep the oyster bags in good repair, making sure they’re clean and repairing them when needed.
“I feel like I’ve learned a lot,” she says.
Alicia’s family and friends are intrigued by her work. “They don’t get it too much, but they do enjoy, when I come home and tell them some stories about what I do.”
“I really do enjoy it,” she continues. “It really helps keep me balanced, and it’s just helping me improve myself. I’ve never worked full time until now, so it’s really an adjustment,” she laughs, “but I feel like it’s been going very well here.”
Clearly Dale and farm manager Travis agree. At the end of her official internship, Alicia became a full-time employee at Blue Stream Shellfish – a real success story for the Massachusetts Sea Grant aquaculture internship program.