Two coastal Alabama residents hope to combat climate change with a new invention that makes oyster farming easier.
Andy Depaola, a retired microbiologist with the Food and Drug Administration, and Ben Raines, a former AL.com reporter and current environmental fellow at the University of South Alabama, are leading the “Restoring Oysters for Climate Sustainability” or “ROCS” project.
The group hopes to use Depaola’s patented invention, the ‘Shellevator’, as a way to scale up oyster production both locally and globally, which they say could both feed the world and remove carbon from the carbon cycle in the short term. the process by which carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere.
“Oysters are one of the oldest carbon sinks [something that absorbs and stores carbon] in the world,” says Raines.
The shellevator is an oyster farming device that removes oysters from the water in minutes using an air pump, dramatically reducing the labor required. The shellevator is mobile, meaning it can be moved as needed, and can be scaled up or down to increase the number of oysters produced, Depaola says.
The “express” shellevator model holds 96 oyster bags, and each bag holds between 300 and 500 oysters. The shellevator could allow one person to farm millions of oysters per year, according to a video produced by Raines.
“The importance of this cannot be overstated,” Depaola said. “I can grow about twenty times the yield on one hectare than with conventional [manual] methods.”
In April, the nonprofit was named one of the top 50 teams in the XPRIZE for Carbon Removal, Elon Musk’s four-year competition to advance carbon capture projects. The winner of the competition will receive $50 million, to be awarded in 2025. In September, Raines and Depaola will travel to California to meet with investors as part of the XPRIZE.
The team has also submitted an application to the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources for Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act (GOMESA) to deploy the shellevator locally. Raines says they are still waiting to hear if they received the money.
More than oysters
Raines and Depaola hope to restore the oyster reefs that have been lost, not only in Mobile Bay but worldwide, as demand for oysters has decimated the reefs in recent decades. According to previous reporting by Raines on AL.com, 1.8 billion adult oysters have likely been removed from Mobile Bay over the past century. In 2010, 142,359 pounds of oysters were harvested from the bay, compared to 33,586 pounds in 2015.
Oysters draw carbon from the water to form their shells, which are made of calcium carbonate. On a three-acre site on the Mississippi Sound off the coast of Alabama, 300 shellevators could remove 1,000 tons of carbon from the short-term carbon cycle in seven months, according to a video produced by Raines. To enter Musk’s competition, participants had to demonstrate that their invention could remove 1,000 tons of carbon per year.
And replenishing the world’s oysters would improve water quality, they argue. Oysters are known as a “keystone species,” meaning they have a disproportionate effect on the ecosystem. According to the Connecticut Department of Agriculture, oysters create new habitat for marine life by forming reefs, and (like other shellfish) they filter the water and remove particles and nutrients during the feeding process.
At Depaola’s farm on Portersville Bay in Coden, flounder, dolphins and other marine life gathered around the shellevators, attracted to the ecosystem created by the oysters.
Making the Shellevator
When he first invented the Shellevator, Depaola was simply looking for an easier way to access the oysters he farmed beneath his pier in Mobile Bay. Farmed oysters should be removed from the water once a week to kill pests and control biofouling, a process known as dehydration. A native of North Carolina, Depaola always loved eating oysters and started farming them in 2013.
After Depaola, 71, was injured in an accident and broke his neck, his wife began caring for his oysters. Even though he was mobile again, DePaola still wanted a way to access the oysters without manually lifting the bags out of the water.
He contacted Raines about the idea. Ultimately, they realized that the Shellevator could be so much more than an aquaculture tool.
Feeding the world
Aside from the environmental impact, Raines and Depaola argue that the Shellevator could help feed the world’s population. Not only would bringing back the oyster harvest create jobs, the Shellevator also allows oysters to be mass produced, reducing labor and making oysters cheaper.
“You can give people a technology that makes proteins,” says Raines. “We think we can revolutionize oyster production around the world.”
Next steps
The two are currently looking for a way to produce shellevators more cheaply. The “express” shellevator, made using a repurposed pontoon boat and cages welded in Louisiana, costs between $10,000 and $20,000 to make, Depaola says.
And Depaola has another idea to simulate wild oyster reefs in the bay. Called ‘The Reefer’, Depaola submerges coiled crab trap wire into a tank filled with oyster larvae with eyes that attach to the wire and begin to grow. The larvae would then grow in a shellevator until they were one inch in size, after which the wire could be placed in the water, creating a new oyster reef.
Ultimately, Raines says, the two want to recreate the oyster reefs in Mobile Bay they remember from their childhood. You used to be able to harvest oysters most of the year, but now the season only lasts a few weeks.
“The carbon sequestration is just a total bonus,” says Raines.