Two coastal Alabama residents hope to fight climate change with a new invention that will make it easier to farm oysters.
Andy Depaola, a retired Food and Drug Administration microbiologist, and Ben Raines, a former AL.com reporter and current environmentalist at the University of South Alabama, lead the “Recovering Oysters for Climate Sustainability” or “ROCS” project.
The group hopes to use Depaola’s patented invention, the “Shellevator,” as a way to increase oyster production both locally and globally, which it claims can feed the world and remove carbon from the short-term carbon cycle, the process by which carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere.
“Oysters are kind of the oldest carbon sink [something that absorbs and stores carbon] in the world,” says Raines.
The Shellevator is an oyster farming device that pulls oysters out of the water using an air pump in minutes, dramatically reducing the labor required. The sheller is mobile, meaning it can be moved when needed and can be scaled up or down to increase the number of oysters produced, Depaola says.
The “express” model shellevator holds 96 oyster bags and each bag contains 300-500 oysters. With a shellevator, one person could grow millions of oysters a year, according to a video produced by Raines.
“The importance of this cannot be overstated,” Depaola said. “I can grow about 20 times the yield per acre than conventional [manual] methods.”
In April, the nonprofit was named one of the top 50 teams in Elon Musk’s quadrennial XPRIZE for Carbon Removal competition to spur 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 XPRIZE investors.
The team also applied for state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act (GOMESA) funding to implement the shellevator locally. Raines says they are still waiting to hear if they received the money.
More than oysters
Raines and Depaola hope to recreate oyster reefs that have been lost not just in Mobile Bay, but around the world as demand for oysters has decimated reefs in recent decades. According to previous reports by Raines on AL.com, it is likely that 1.8 billion mature oysters have 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 extract carbon from the water to create their shells, which are made of calcium carbonate. At a three-acre site in the Mississippi Sound off the coast of Alabama, 300 grenade launchers could remove 1,000 tons of carbon from the short-term carbon cycle in seven months, according to a video Raines created. To enter Musk’s competition, participants had to demonstrate that their invention could remove 1,000 metric tons of carbon per year.
And replenishing the world’s oysters would improve water quality, he claims. Oysters are what is known as a “keystone species,” meaning they have a disproportionate impact on the ecosystem. According to the Connecticut Department of Agriculture, oysters create new habitats for marine life by creating reefs and (like other mollusks) filter water and remove particles and nutrients during the feeding process.
At Depaola Farm in Portersville Bay, Coden, flounder, dolphins and other marine animals gathered around the shells, attracted to the ecosystem created by the oysters.
Creating a Shellevator
When he first invented the Shellevator, Depaola was simply looking for an easier way to get to the oysters he grew under his pier in Mobile Bay. Farmed oysters must be taken out of the water once a week to kill pests and prevent biofouling, a process known as desiccation. A native of North Carolina, Depaola has always loved eating oysters and started growing them in 2013.
After Depaola, 71, was injured in an accident and broke his neck, his wife took care of his oysters. Although he had regained his mobility, DePaola still wanted a way to get to the oysters without manually lifting the bags out of the water.
He approached Raines with this idea. Eventually, they realized that the Shellevator could be much more than just an aquaculture tool.
Feeding the world
Beyond the environmental impact, Raines and Depaola say the Shellevator could help feed the world’s population. Not only would resuming oyster harvesting create jobs, but the Shellevator allows mass production of oysters, reducing labor and making oysters cheaper.
“You can give people a technology where you make proteins,” Raines says. “We think we can revolutionize oyster production worldwide.”
Next steps
Right now, the two are looking for a way to make the shells cheaper. The “express” shellevator, made using a repurposed pontoon boat and cages welded in Louisiana, costs between $10,000 and $20,000 to build, Depaola says.
And Depaola has another idea for recreating the bay’s wild oyster reefs. Dubbed “The Reefer,” Depaola submerges coiled crab 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 the shellevator until they were one inch in size, at which point the wire could be deployed into the water to create a new oyster reef.
Ultimately, Raines says, the two want to recreate the oyster reefs in Mobile Bay they remember from childhood. You used to be able to harvest oysters most of the year, but now the season is shortened to just a few weeks.
“Carbon sequestration is just a total bonus,” Raines says.