Bluestarr Oyster Co.

We’re operating a floating shellfish nursery at the Blue Starr Oyster Co. now.

The unit is a 64 bin upweller.  Maximum capacity is somewhere in the 5 million range, but this is not an easy number to arrive at. The FLUPSY was formerly located near Kake, Alaska, and a “float” had to be constructed under it in order to tow it here.  The first step was loading the needed supplies about our “transport” vessel and moving all the items and four guys to Stedman Cove.

We moved the FLUPSY to the beach, “jacked it up” and then constructed foam pontoons under the heavy sucker.

You can see  (from L to R) Jerry Ryggs, Joe Carl and Tim Carl at work on a beautiful February day.

The float was towed by Jere Crew at about 4+ knots down through Rocky Pass then Dry Pass/ El Capitan to end up in Tokeen Bay. Then, it was thoroughly cleaned and repaired prior to relaunching.

Here is a better photo of one of the side channels that is exposed in Jim Aguiar’s big invention.

Here is Zach -the Nurseryman as we remove the floats and relaunch the FLUPSY.  It was much lighter after removing years of fouling.