Anchorage Daily News

JUNEAU -- Tom Henderson has a lot more babies to take care of this year, what with the 4 million oyster spat he's raising. But at least he now has a couple of people to help with the child care.

Henderson's Pearl of Alaska in Kake was a one-man operation until this year, though still one of the largest in Alaska. Sealaska Corp., Southeast's regional Alaska Native corporation, sees oysters as an opportunity and is helping Henderson grow his business and train new workers who can become oyster farmers themselves.

Sealaska vice president Rick Harris explained why. Southeast rural communities are desperate for jobs and people are reportedly leaving them for urban centers. And the timber industry isn't what it once was.

"When you look at the unemployment rates in the rural communities, that tells you there's something we need to be doing," said Harris. "We look at oysters and we believe that's the kind of thing we need to do in our region."

Just across the border, British Columbia supports a thriving oyster industry: Foodies can eat their way through oyster festivals all year long and about 5,000 people work in oyster-related jobs. In 2007, Alaska had 26 oyster growers who sold about $450,000 in oysters -- tiny in comparison. But 30 years ago, that's about where B.C. was, Harris said.

Harris said there's no reason Alaska can't grow more oysters.

"I think we're no different than B.C. in terms of the opportunity," he said. "I would argue that because our water's a little colder" -- that is, the temperature-sensitive oysters never ooze the milky spawn that grosses out potential eaters -- "we may have a competitive advantage in the summer."

Tom Henderson agrees. Unlike businessmen in most industries, he doesn't see any harm in competition.

"Nobody has trouble selling oysters," he said. "I'd love to see three or four more farms."

But according to Harris and other oyster industry experts, there are two chokepoints on Alaska's oyster businesses.

One, few people around here know the art of raising oysters.

Two, oysters require a lot of capital, which prospective oyster farmers hardly ever have.

Sealaska wants to loosen both chokepoints. The company bought a roughly $150,000 Flupsy -- meaning "floating upwelling system," a contraption that provides a controlled but natural environment for oyster spat -- for Henderson's Stedman Cove operation. And the company is paying the wages for Henderson's two helpers, in exchange for which he trains them as potential oyster farmers.

They are both Sealaska shareholders and former Kake loggers.

Oyster-farmer-in-training Xavier Friday said cleaning, sorting and packing oysters for 10 hours a day can be tiring. But it is a lot easier on his body than thinning spruce trees under a dark canopy.

And free oysters are a major job perk.

"It's just a job for right now," Friday said. "But it might be something I'm interested in."

Henderson bought 2 million spat, or baby oysters, while the other 2 million belong to Sealaska. The deal is that Henderson and his two helpers will tend the Flupsy until the spat grow from the size of half a man's pinky fingernail to thumbnail-size. At that point, Sealaska will either sell its spat to other oyster farmers or pay Henderson to grow them to a marketable size.

It turns out that baby oysters are, like other creatures, happiest when they're handled frequently. They need to be sorted by size as they grow, else the largest ones get larger and bully out the smaller ones. And they need someone to clear them of the clumps and muck that choke them off. They also come out with nicer shapes when they're handled more; oysters, it seems, can be rather high-maintenance.

As a one-man operation, Henderson had about 27 percent of his brood survive. He calculates that the survival may go up to 70 percent with the extra help. With that and the extra spat, Henderson estimated his production could rise from the 9,000 dozen he could do by himself to about 50,000. Fifty thousand dozen translates to 600,000 oysters.

Henderson's job just got a little easier. Picking oysters on the beach is hard on the back. And having help lets him leave occasionally.

"I almost get two days off a week, which is the first time ever," he said. "I wouldn't mind taking a summer vacation up north someday."

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