It's hard to think of a more sustainable way to produce seafood than raising blue mussels. You hang a rope in the water in the spring and mussel larvae will attach to it. Anywhere from 16 to 24 months later, you will have a nice plump mussel ready to market. And mussels are good for the water, too. 

One of the most voracious filter feeders in the ocean, a blue mussel will filter up to 20 gallons of water a day. In the process, they will improve water quality by removing a lot of nitrogen from the water. And too much nitrogen in the water, much of which comes from runoff from land-based agriculture, can lead to a host of undesirable consequences such as low oxygen levels, which can be lethal to fish and shellfish.
 
But David Cole, a mussel farmer and owner of Prince Edward Aqua Farms, one of the largest mussel processors on Canada's Prince Edward Island, has come up with a way to make mussel farming even more sustainable. It's a matter of the mud. When they're hanging out on their ropes, mussels get coated in silt, which has to be washed off during processing. While the mud is a mess, what's worse is that it contains tunicates, or sea squirts, an invasive little filter feeder that latches on to the mussel and competes with the mussel for nutrients.

Coles and Jerry Bidgood, the company's general manager, figured there had to be a better way to handle the mud than simply dumping it back in the water, live tunicates and all. So they invested about $500,000 in a filtration system that removes the particulates from the waste water, reducing the amount of organic material they pump back into the bay by 90 percent. But what's even better is they make money from the rich material that settles, which they are marketing to golf courses and farms as a "nutrient rich organic soil amendment" under the company's AquaGrow brand.

When they're not moving mud, Prince Edward Aqua Farms is moving mussels - lots of them.  Last year, Bidgood estimates the company sold about 12 million pounds of mussels, about 30 percent of all the mussels raised on the island. Some 70 percent of their sales are to distributors in Boston and the rest to markets in Canada. Mussel production in PEI has been stable for years at about 40 million pounds, as there are very few new leases to be had. That's one reason Prince Edward Aqua has expanded by offering its customers other live shellfish, including Malpeque oysters, hard and softshell clams.

Click here to view Prince Edward Aqua Farms' products and remember to tell them that you found them on FishChoice.com when you contact them.