A Fusion of Science and Shell Fishing: How New Practices are Benefitting Cape Aquaculture

Written by Doreen Leggett

Dan Ward of Ward Aquafarms has been growing oysters since 2012 and has experimented with a variety of other things over the years, bay scallops and sugar kelp for instance, and most recently tautog.

“I started oyster farming because that is what we can do, growing oysters and clams is viable,” Ward said. “I need to keep the lights on and once they are on, you can branch out.”

Ward was standing near two tanks of a few dozen rotini-size brown and black mottled fish in a back corner of a hatchery on the Pocasset River in Bourne. The hatchery, the second on the Cape, came online last year and was prompted by a need to grow more bay scallops; it came about by investing in a marina to help pay the bills.

Ward’s professional life has been a meld of practical and visionary, academic research and the business of fishing.

He grew up in the New Hampshire woods but was always interested in marine biology, graduating from University of Rhode Island in 2005.

Back in New Hampshire, he worked on commercial lobster and fishing boats, struck by how one experienced captain was putting in a lot of work for not a lot of money. Ward wasn’t sure that was the path he wanted to follow.

“I wasn’t sure about the future,” he said.

At the time, the captain was involved in an open-ocean aquaculture experiment working with the University of New Hampshire. Started in 1999, the project has grown summer flounder, halibut and Atlantic cod in submerged cages.

Ward said he began to see a future in aquaculture and went on to get his masters, then doctorate in the field.

He moved to the Cape close to 15 years ago, living in Falmouth with his wife and two children, and decided to use his scientific and academic background to help his business, also aquaculture as a whole.