CASTLE HAVEN-- -- Down a one-lane road past barren fields teeming with squawking Canada geese is something that hasn't been found on the Eastern Shore for more than two decades - a river filled with oysters.
And Kevin McClarren knows how many are there, because he and his crew have planted every single one. Five million healthy oysters on 3,000 floats on the water's surface, with anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 oysters each.
Every day, McClarren and his four workers - all of whom have degrees in biology or marine science - wade into the water, each with multiple layers of sweat shirts, to tend to their burgeoning crop.
"It's not a real easy way to make a living," McClarren said recently as he helped the crew power-wash oysters in 35-degree weather. "I can't see a time when there's going to be an awful lot of this around here."
Nearly two years after Maryland streamlined its permitting rules in hopes of encouraging underemployed watermen to enter the aquaculture business, McClarren operates one of just a handful of commercial oyster farms in Maryland and the only one with a hatchery.
In the past two years, the company, called Marinetics, has sold 365,000 oysters. McClarren says it's close to breaking even now and could turn a profit in two or three years. The goal is to sell a million oysters a year.
The fledgling business is succeeding at a time when the natural oyster harvest has dipped to historic lows. State officials expect this season to yield about half the 165,000 bushels harvested last season, a small fraction of the catch 20 years ago.
The state would like to see more McClarrens out there. He and his boss, owner Bob Maze, said various state agencies did everything they could to help them when they began production a few years ago. But starting and running an aquaculture business is incredibly difficult - and wading into icy waters to catch a wayward oyster float is the least of it.
Oyster odyssey begins
Maze and his wife, Laurie Landeau, started Marinetics in the mid-1990s. The couple had just graduated from the University of Pennsylvania - he with a doctorate in a parasitology, she with a degree in veterinary medicine.
They wanted to study the two diseases that have all but destroyed the Chesapeake Bay's natural oysters.
To support their research, Maze said, the couple began growing oysters for sale.
