Andrew Peters was on a waitlist for a lobster license. Then he learned it was possible to farm scallops in Maine.
For the last seven years, Peters and his wife Samantha have been trying to do so successfully, adapting techniques from Japan to Maine waters.
Using long, vertical lines of nets tethered along four acres of Penobscot Bay off Deer Isle, they’ve found seemingly unlimited demand for the scallops they grow. Their business, Vertical Bay, became Peters’ full-time job in 2021, when they started selling scallops locally. In 2024, they added out-of-state customers.
But given the small scale of their farm and other Maine scallop growing operations, high equipment costs and long growing times have made it difficult to turn a profit.
Now, the Peterses are at a turning point. To find whether scallop farming really can provide sustainable small businesses for Mainers, they have applied for a 41.2-acre, 20-year standard aquaculture lease to replace their experimental lease.
If the state Department of Marine Resources approves the application, it would become the largest scallop farming operation in Maine. It would also rank among the largest leases for all shellfish growing operations, a category which also includes oyster and mussel farms.
The Peterses want to use their business as a model to help people into a slow-growing industry that they believe, despite challenges, can bring new revenue to Maine’s working waterfront communities while also helping wild scallop populations. If it can’t scale up, though, that may be a sign that the industry will have trouble taking off or surviving.
Their project comes at a time when lobster landings are down, raising questions about the future of the industry, and other traditional fisheries along the coast have been closed. However, wild scallop landings remain valuable and the country continues to import more, which points to the demand growers could meet.
“This could replace lobster” economically, Peters said, though the fisheries don’t compete. “That’s not the goal, but if it needed to, it could.”
It could also add new sources of revenue on the water or become another source of income for lobstermen.
Mainers have dabbled in scallop growing since at least the 1970s. Expertise from Japan, where scallop farming began, has since filtered over to the state. In the last decade a handful of small scallop farms got their start in Maine, several in the waters off Deer Isle-Stonington. Dozens of others are interested or experimenting, Peters said at an April 24 hearing before state regulators for his expansion application.
Scallop farming “has the potential to be a larger contributor to Maine’s economy, as demonstrated in other countries, and could significantly contribute to the diversification and resiliency of communities,” according to a 2019 report sponsored by Coastal Enterprises Inc.
But for the industry to grow, it’s “critical” that farmers get training, inexpensive financing, timely leases and support for biotoxin testing, said Sebastian Belle, executive director of the Maine Aquaculture Association.
Scallops can accumulate biotoxins from the water as they grow, and the cost of testing has been another barrier for new farmers.
But one advantage for scallop farming is that the industry may bring less controversy than oyster farms, which have sometimes met pushback around Maine for their visibility from waterfront homes, floating cages and fears that oysters change conditions for soft-shell clams.
While oysters grow in tidal rivers and coves — near clam flats, landowners, recreational boaters and more potential for conflict — scallops are less controversial because they’re farmed farther out at sea and submerged at least 15 feet, according to Peters.
At his application’s hearing, the only speaker was Deer Isle’s town manager, Jim Fisher. He said he hadn’t heard major objections to the project, but residents wanted more outreach from Peters and worried whether the lease could be sold to a larger company — a lingering fear around aquaculture operations on Maine’s coast.
Deer Isle’s comprehensive plan indicates that the town should support a fisheries economy that can adapt to changes, including through carefully managed development of small, owner-operator aquaculture businesses.
Research in other states has also shown that farmers collecting spat, or the very young scallops that the growers raise, increases wild populations, meaning farming could help traditional harvesters too. Unlike for oysters, there isn’t a solid commercial scallop hatchery, so growers collect spat at sea.
If the new lease is approved, Peters wants to share the results as a model others can use to get into scallop farming. Scallops take three years to reach market size, meaning missteps are costly. “It’s been a slog,” he said of his own learning curve.
With funding from congressional earmarks, Vertical Bay is working on a free “roadmap” document aiming to help farmers enter the industry and learn from others’ mistakes, similar to a 2015 guide to kelp farming produced by Maine research organizations. Peters’ guide includes financial models, and he would share the results if the larger lease is approved and they scale up their production.
“Because the market is so big, it’s like, I will help whoever else,” he said. “There’s no competition.”
Having more scallop farmers would actually help him: the necessary equipment comes from Japan and has to be ordered in bulk in a monthslong process, but if the industry expanded marine supply stores could carry it or farmers might order cooperatively.
Another hurdle is Maine’s aquaculture lease application process, which can take years and makes it difficult for small businesses to plan ahead. Vertical Bay submitted its expansion proposal nearly two and a half years ago, and in the meantime, it has continued to farm at a scale that Peters says is too small to turn a profit.
“At this scale, Vertical Bay cannot survive,” he said at the April hearing.
