The Scallop Rafts Being Built At Squirrel Cove

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - Anyone visiting Squirrel Cove right now can see a series of freshly constructed rafts anchored close to the government dock. There were four of them when Cortes Currents first noticed, and another two being built on the beach. Now they are all in the Cove. There are piles of lumber and floats nearby, and a huge pile of hoop-like ‘lantern nets’ waiting on the Squirrel Cove Dock.

“We're leasing the spot off of the store this month to do the building because it's the most practical place,” explained Paul Muskee, Operations Manager for Klahoose Aquaculture.

A well known member of the local aquacultural community, Erik Lyon of Rising Tide Shellfish, has been on the job site.

Paul Muskee: “The rafts are being built by our partner Rising Tide, a bunch of folks from the island and Kenny Hanuse from the village. 100 They will be holding lantern nets, that will hold the scallops.”

“One of the cool things is between the Klahoose Sawmill and Blue Jay Lake sawmill, all the word was milled on island. That's a good news story. Originally, when we had planned for these rafts, the Klahoose Mill wasn't operating, so we budgeted to bring wood on island from somewhere else.”

CC: How long do you expect this project to take?

Paul Muskee: “Just a couple of weeks. I think they'll be done pretty soon. There's I think they're building 10 or 12 rafts. So our original design was for larger rafts, eight rafts, but we've abridged the design, so we're going to get a few more rafts out of it.

CC: Where are they going to be deployed?

Paul Muskee: “We’re going to try a few different spots: Teakerne Arm, at our Klahoose tenure up there, we'll probably try some in Gorge Harbor. Those will be the two main places. The thinking is to spread the risk in case there's a health issue in one area, the other area will still be hopefully covered.”

“These are all going to expand Klahoose's scallop program. We're pretty excited about scallops. It's been going really well. I know different scallop programs have ran into health problems, but we haven't had any. They're growing robustly.We’re especially targeting the Asian live market.”