A fifteen year old boy needed a change of pace. Both his grandfather and father were Harpswell clammers, and that’s all he had known his entire life. He left home with his car and $120 headed south. By the time he got to Florida, he had run out of land and nearly run out of money. He had only $7 left. He found places to sleep and work. Eventually, he bought a party boat for $35 so he could go fishing. He lived there for a little while, keeping the catch that sportfishermen didn’t want and selling it to get by. Pretty soon, he got tired of all the partying and drove back up north. He went on a few weeklong offshore fishing trips. It was like boot camp at sea, you couldn’t spend money or drink too much.
That boy grew up and spent the next twenty-five years fishing for lobster and working as a commercial diver. Finally, he returned to the family business.
Fifteen year old Scott Moody has spent the rest of his life in Harpswell and is now the fifty-three year old owner of the massive and ever-growing Moody’s Seafood.
He has crisp blue eyes that cut through the gruff of his tanned and clean-shaven face. Scott wears a black baseball cap sporting a golden Moody’s Seafood logo with a matching logo on his black t-shirt.
Scott’s grandfather and father only harvested clams from one location. Scott thought that wasn’t enough. He was the first to branch out. First, he bought clams off of a buddy. Then another. And another. He wanted to create a bigger market for the harvesters. Scott had a vision of opening new doors and new avenues for Maine shellfish. He wanted to cut out the middleman.
Now he buys thirty tons of shellfish a week.
The thirty tons of shellfish include softshell clams, hardshell clams or quahogs, razorclams, American oysters, Milan oysters, blue mussels, and other types of shellfish found on the Maine coast. In the winter, he focuses more on oysters including European and long oysters.
In 1999, he founded Moody’s Seafood, a shellfish buyer and processor in midcoast Maine. He has seven locations along the midcoast where he processes the shellfish bought from 200-300 harvesters. The shellfish industry in Maine is a nineteen million dollar industry, seven million of which is sold by Moody’s Seafood. Scott buys 35% of all shellfish, not including lobster, harvesting on Maine’s coast.
Where do those thirty tons of shellfish every week go? 90% of the product goes to Boston.
“Diggers feel like I’m dictating the price because I buy so much. Really it’s not that. It’s just supply and demand. Now I’ve become the dealer I tried to go around,” he says.
“I sell to big distributors in Boston. They typically take our product down there, process it, and bring it back to sell to restaurants in Maine. I’m kind of in a catch-22, ya know? I have to take care of the wholesalers, but yet I can’t step on their toes. That’s just the way it is.”
The shellfish industry in Massachusetts has moved to focus on shucking because their waters are too polluted to harvest much anymore. From Boston’s overpopulation and urban sprawl, it only takes about one-quarter inch of rain to close Massachusetts shellfisheries while the less populated Maine waters can take two inches of rain before being shut down. Rain washes chemicals and pollution from the land into the water. Subsequently, filter feeders such as clams, mussels, and oysters take in that pollution when they filter the water through their systems.
There are no big shellfish shucking facilities in Maine. Scott tries to keep the small amount of shucking that he is able to do as local as possible. He’s shipping his product down to Massachusetts just so it can come back up to Maine, which doesn’t make much sense. The least he can do is keep the jobs that he can in Maine.
On the business end, however, he has been fortunate in selling to Massachusetts buyers. He sells to the Ipswich Shellfish Group which sells to many customers including Legal Seafood’s twenty-eight restaurants.
“If you have ever eaten shellfish at Legal Seafood, it’s mine.”
Moody’s Seafood buys up much of the coast’s shellfish, but are there other big players? Not really. There are other harvesters on the coast, but Scott calls them “micro shops”.
He says frankly, “We dominate the market.”
Scott has four sons, ages eighteen to thirty all involved in the business. They handle more of the downstream parts of the business while Scott says that his job is to “keep kicking everybody in the ass in the right direction, going from one bonfire to another.”
Scott took the saying “If you can’t beat them, out breed them” to heart. He seems to have done both.
“When you get to the level I am, regulations are a battle every day of the week,” he says.
Scott and the shellfish industry have to grapple with ever-present pollution closing the fisheries. When closed for rain, most harvesters are out of work, but Scott is one of two Maine harvesters certified to harvest in polluted areas. The other certified harvester is Spinney Creek Shellfish which is a significantly smaller operation. This certification gives Scott access to twice as many clams in the rain which others cannot harvest. These two businesses have set ups to purge sand from polluted shellfish and zap bacteria with UV radiation so they are safe to eat.
Inherently, however, any shellfish can be polluted even if legally harvested or recorded as such. Water quality is tested to determine if an area is safe for fishing. According to Scott, however, after a storm, the state may take just one water sample for an entire one mile cove area. This could dramatically misrepresent the water quality in the entire cove.
Because shellfish filter the water for nutrients, they grow bigger in more polluted waters with excessive nutrients available. For that reason, some harvesters may have said they dug in one spot, when actually it was from “under a shit pipe,” as Scott puts it.
That isn’t to say the shellfish is unsafe to eat, however. It just may not be as clean as it is advertised as being.
That is exactly why Scott is currently building a new facility in Cundy’s Harbor to hold 700 bushels of clams. The facility is a large building with essentially two big holes in the bottom to hold clams. When Scott sees rain coming, he can buy up extra clams and hold them there.
“Then, my accounts have product when nobody else does. It gives me an edge. The price goes through the ceiling because nobody else can get ‘em, but I’ve got ‘em.”
At the new facility they will be able to purge and UV treat the product, meaning they are certified to all be clean. Ultimately, Scott hopes to farm some clams.
The final piece in Scott’s business plan is shellfish farming. At the new facility, he will have an upweller which pulls in fresh seawater providing a constant flow of food for infant shellfish. The controlled setting allows a farmer to grow spawned shellfish faster. Once they are thumbnail sized, the shellfish are moved to grow in the wild in cages. This shellfish farming method will not replace harvesting, but they will be grown as more of a specialty, high-end product.
“I’m kind of burnt out,” Scott says, “We’re at the point where we have enough.”
He says that, but also just opened a new shucking facility on Bath Road in Brunswick and has development plans for the property which was once Sea Coast Autobody car wash. Until the day I talked to him, Scott had employees shucking softshell clams in a building right next to his house in Cundy’s Harbor. That day, he moved the operation to Bath Road. The new location is much more central for harvesters from Freeport, Harpswell, and Brunswick who had to go right by there to get to Cundy’s Harbor anyway. Plus, this gets the shuckers out of his front yard.
“I woke up this morning to a quiet yard.”
The car wash had been vacant for five years before Scott bought it. His electrician, who is also his nephew, took one look at the place and said, “Jesus, Uncle! Are you serious?” Yes. He was. Scott recounts the story with a deep, rich laugh.
The main car wash bay now has steel clam shucking tables in the middle with fans on the floor and industrial strip lighting on the ceiling. About twenty employees, from teenagers to middle aged people, stand at waist high steel tables in jeans and t-shirts. Each shucker takes clams from a pile in the middle of the table, removes the meaty part of the clam and puts it in a red plastic bowl. They then toss the empty shell down a wide PVC pipe which leads to a bin on the floor.
The empty shells normally go in the compost. While I was looking around, someone from the town of Brunswick called Scott. They wanted him to go to the next town meeting to discuss using his shells on the shoreline to prevent erosion.
The shucked clams get rinsed, checked for any bad spots, and packaged in a gallon container on ice. Those shucked clams then go on a truck to Boston where they will travel some more before ending up fried on a customer’s plate at a restaurant.
Clams come in when harvesters finish for the day at around four in the afternoon. Everything goes on a truck to be shipped except for exactly what they need for the following day’s shucking production. Moody’s Seafood stores the shellfish overnight in orange crates stacked chest high in a refrigerated room. Those are the clams that are shucked the following day. Everything that came in the evening before will be gone by the end of the next day.
“The speed gives us an edge on quality,” says Scott.
They only shuck the softshell clams, which are sold by the pound. Hardshells, also called quahogs, little necks, or chowders when they’re bigger, are chewier and more desirable. These are sold by the piece and often used for clam chowder.
The car wash also has two open bays next to it which will soon be a fish market. Scott will sell fresh and locally caught fish, shellfish, and lobsters from Bath Road. What makes this fish market different from others is that although the fish will be kept on ice, everything else will be kept live in tanks. That’s as fresh as it gets.
We can look forward to a fish market and cleaner shellfish soon. For now, Scott works twenty hour days putting out bonfires, harvesters bring in their clams at four, and shuckers shuck all day long.
That boy grew up and spent the next twenty-five years fishing for lobster and working as a commercial diver. Finally, he returned to the family business.
Fifteen year old Scott Moody has spent the rest of his life in Harpswell and is now the fifty-three year old owner of the massive and ever-growing Moody’s Seafood.
He has crisp blue eyes that cut through the gruff of his tanned and clean-shaven face. Scott wears a black baseball cap sporting a golden Moody’s Seafood logo with a matching logo on his black t-shirt.
Scott’s grandfather and father only harvested clams from one location. Scott thought that wasn’t enough. He was the first to branch out. First, he bought clams off of a buddy. Then another. And another. He wanted to create a bigger market for the harvesters. Scott had a vision of opening new doors and new avenues for Maine shellfish. He wanted to cut out the middleman.
Now he buys thirty tons of shellfish a week.
The thirty tons of shellfish include softshell clams, hardshell clams or quahogs, razorclams, American oysters, Milan oysters, blue mussels, and other types of shellfish found on the Maine coast. In the winter, he focuses more on oysters including European and long oysters.
In 1999, he founded Moody’s Seafood, a shellfish buyer and processor in midcoast Maine. He has seven locations along the midcoast where he processes the shellfish bought from 200-300 harvesters. The shellfish industry in Maine is a nineteen million dollar industry, seven million of which is sold by Moody’s Seafood. Scott buys 35% of all shellfish, not including lobster, harvesting on Maine’s coast.
Where do those thirty tons of shellfish every week go? 90% of the product goes to Boston.
“Diggers feel like I’m dictating the price because I buy so much. Really it’s not that. It’s just supply and demand. Now I’ve become the dealer I tried to go around,” he says.
“I sell to big distributors in Boston. They typically take our product down there, process it, and bring it back to sell to restaurants in Maine. I’m kind of in a catch-22, ya know? I have to take care of the wholesalers, but yet I can’t step on their toes. That’s just the way it is.”
The shellfish industry in Massachusetts has moved to focus on shucking because their waters are too polluted to harvest much anymore. From Boston’s overpopulation and urban sprawl, it only takes about one-quarter inch of rain to close Massachusetts shellfisheries while the less populated Maine waters can take two inches of rain before being shut down. Rain washes chemicals and pollution from the land into the water. Subsequently, filter feeders such as clams, mussels, and oysters take in that pollution when they filter the water through their systems.
There are no big shellfish shucking facilities in Maine. Scott tries to keep the small amount of shucking that he is able to do as local as possible. He’s shipping his product down to Massachusetts just so it can come back up to Maine, which doesn’t make much sense. The least he can do is keep the jobs that he can in Maine.
On the business end, however, he has been fortunate in selling to Massachusetts buyers. He sells to the Ipswich Shellfish Group which sells to many customers including Legal Seafood’s twenty-eight restaurants.
“If you have ever eaten shellfish at Legal Seafood, it’s mine.”
Moody’s Seafood buys up much of the coast’s shellfish, but are there other big players? Not really. There are other harvesters on the coast, but Scott calls them “micro shops”.
He says frankly, “We dominate the market.”
Scott has four sons, ages eighteen to thirty all involved in the business. They handle more of the downstream parts of the business while Scott says that his job is to “keep kicking everybody in the ass in the right direction, going from one bonfire to another.”
Scott took the saying “If you can’t beat them, out breed them” to heart. He seems to have done both.
“When you get to the level I am, regulations are a battle every day of the week,” he says.
Scott and the shellfish industry have to grapple with ever-present pollution closing the fisheries. When closed for rain, most harvesters are out of work, but Scott is one of two Maine harvesters certified to harvest in polluted areas. The other certified harvester is Spinney Creek Shellfish which is a significantly smaller operation. This certification gives Scott access to twice as many clams in the rain which others cannot harvest. These two businesses have set ups to purge sand from polluted shellfish and zap bacteria with UV radiation so they are safe to eat.
Inherently, however, any shellfish can be polluted even if legally harvested or recorded as such. Water quality is tested to determine if an area is safe for fishing. According to Scott, however, after a storm, the state may take just one water sample for an entire one mile cove area. This could dramatically misrepresent the water quality in the entire cove.
Because shellfish filter the water for nutrients, they grow bigger in more polluted waters with excessive nutrients available. For that reason, some harvesters may have said they dug in one spot, when actually it was from “under a shit pipe,” as Scott puts it.
That isn’t to say the shellfish is unsafe to eat, however. It just may not be as clean as it is advertised as being.
That is exactly why Scott is currently building a new facility in Cundy’s Harbor to hold 700 bushels of clams. The facility is a large building with essentially two big holes in the bottom to hold clams. When Scott sees rain coming, he can buy up extra clams and hold them there.
“Then, my accounts have product when nobody else does. It gives me an edge. The price goes through the ceiling because nobody else can get ‘em, but I’ve got ‘em.”
At the new facility they will be able to purge and UV treat the product, meaning they are certified to all be clean. Ultimately, Scott hopes to farm some clams.
The final piece in Scott’s business plan is shellfish farming. At the new facility, he will have an upweller which pulls in fresh seawater providing a constant flow of food for infant shellfish. The controlled setting allows a farmer to grow spawned shellfish faster. Once they are thumbnail sized, the shellfish are moved to grow in the wild in cages. This shellfish farming method will not replace harvesting, but they will be grown as more of a specialty, high-end product.
“I’m kind of burnt out,” Scott says, “We’re at the point where we have enough.”
He says that, but also just opened a new shucking facility on Bath Road in Brunswick and has development plans for the property which was once Sea Coast Autobody car wash. Until the day I talked to him, Scott had employees shucking softshell clams in a building right next to his house in Cundy’s Harbor. That day, he moved the operation to Bath Road. The new location is much more central for harvesters from Freeport, Harpswell, and Brunswick who had to go right by there to get to Cundy’s Harbor anyway. Plus, this gets the shuckers out of his front yard.
“I woke up this morning to a quiet yard.”
The car wash had been vacant for five years before Scott bought it. His electrician, who is also his nephew, took one look at the place and said, “Jesus, Uncle! Are you serious?” Yes. He was. Scott recounts the story with a deep, rich laugh.
The main car wash bay now has steel clam shucking tables in the middle with fans on the floor and industrial strip lighting on the ceiling. About twenty employees, from teenagers to middle aged people, stand at waist high steel tables in jeans and t-shirts. Each shucker takes clams from a pile in the middle of the table, removes the meaty part of the clam and puts it in a red plastic bowl. They then toss the empty shell down a wide PVC pipe which leads to a bin on the floor.
The empty shells normally go in the compost. While I was looking around, someone from the town of Brunswick called Scott. They wanted him to go to the next town meeting to discuss using his shells on the shoreline to prevent erosion.
The shucked clams get rinsed, checked for any bad spots, and packaged in a gallon container on ice. Those shucked clams then go on a truck to Boston where they will travel some more before ending up fried on a customer’s plate at a restaurant.
Clams come in when harvesters finish for the day at around four in the afternoon. Everything goes on a truck to be shipped except for exactly what they need for the following day’s shucking production. Moody’s Seafood stores the shellfish overnight in orange crates stacked chest high in a refrigerated room. Those are the clams that are shucked the following day. Everything that came in the evening before will be gone by the end of the next day.
“The speed gives us an edge on quality,” says Scott.
They only shuck the softshell clams, which are sold by the pound. Hardshells, also called quahogs, little necks, or chowders when they’re bigger, are chewier and more desirable. These are sold by the piece and often used for clam chowder.
The car wash also has two open bays next to it which will soon be a fish market. Scott will sell fresh and locally caught fish, shellfish, and lobsters from Bath Road. What makes this fish market different from others is that although the fish will be kept on ice, everything else will be kept live in tanks. That’s as fresh as it gets.
We can look forward to a fish market and cleaner shellfish soon. For now, Scott works twenty hour days putting out bonfires, harvesters bring in their clams at four, and shuckers shuck all day long.