MIPS Project Detail:

Johnny Oysterseed, LLC

Developing an Improved System for Farming Oysters

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Company

Johnny Oysterseed, LLC

Saint Leonard

Calvert

County

, Maryland

Founded:

2011

Website:

http://www.johnnyoysterseed.com/

Company Description:

Johnny Oysterseed LLC is a venture founded around the farming of the Eastern Oyster (C. virginica). To date, the company has produced/planted approximately 20 million seed oysters in support of commercial food production and ecosystem restoration. Johnny Oysterseed also produces and sells food oysters under its Calvert Crest and Steamboat Landing labels. Ten years of working closely with oysters, government regulations, markets, and industry has given the company deep insight into the challenges currently confronting oyster farmers. This experience, together with engineering expertise, has led Johnny Oysterseed to invent several technical solutions for oyster farming. These solutions have greatly improved the company’s production while reducing labor costs. After realizing these increased efficiencies, Johnny Oysterseed is focusing on manufacturing and marketing its unique technical solutions to the aquaculture industry, with an initial emphasis on the Chesapeake Bay region and the U.S. eastern seaboard.

MIPS Project

Developing an Improved System for Farming Oysters

Project #

6026.22

|

MIPS Round

62 |

Starting Date:

Aug 2018

MIPS Project Challenge:
The goal of this MIPS project is to develop an improved, containerized system for oyster culture that makes it easier to maintain, deploy/retrieve, transport and store cages, as well as expedite specific tasks required for maintaining the oysters themselves.

Project Scope:
Researchers in this MIPS project are engaged in further engineering of the Johnny Oysterseed oyster farming system, including the CAD of subsystems, kinematics of physical interfaces between subsystems, strength of materials, injection-molding of plastics, mechanical torque and power calculations.

As compared to the conventional “Virginia-style” system of cage culture, the proposed “MIPS-style” system achieves tremendous savings in maintenance—a reduction of some 86 percent, amounting to roughly $18,000 savings per year for a small farm operation (240,000 oysters/year annually), according to the company. The workload required to operate the proposed system is minimal enough that it permits a small farmer to pursue the operation as a “side business.” For an example small farmer, an investment of $82,000 in MIPS-style equipment can conservatively produce $72,000/year in receipts while costing only $34,000/year to operate, leaving the farmer a profit of $38,000 per year.

(Source: Johnny Oysterseed)