Where we farm
We have been growing oysters in Fanny Bay for over 40 years. Our farm sites can now be found throughout the cold, crisp waters of the British Columbia coastline. Ships Point, Berray Road, and Denman Island are our three main beach growing areas on Vancouver Island, where the ground is hard and rocky, and our oysters get a natural tumble with each winter storm. We also have several deep water sites that are home to our innovative floating bag system that creates our premium SunSeeker oysters. But we grow more than oysters. We also grow manila clams in Baynes Sound and Salish mussels on our farms in the Desolation Sound.
On the sandy strecthes of beaches in Fanny Bay, our manila clams thrive, growing beautifully coloured shells and savory meats, perfect for steaming at home. We seed all of our shellfish from our own hatcheries, making us a fully integrated farming process, and the largest shellfish producer in Canada.
At our original site in Fanny Bay we raise our young oysters in a unique floating bag system that allows us to control the growth of the oysters before they hit the beach, ensuring a higher survival rate for our farms and less visual impact on our beautiful bays. Some of our oysters, called SunSeekers, live in these floating bags their whole lives, making them a more smooth and shaped oyster with a sweeter complexity of flavors.
In the incredibly beautiful, isolated wilderness of the Desolation Sound and Okeover Inlet are home to a majority of our shucked oyster meat oysters and all of our mussel production, as well as our floating upwell nursery system. These farms are all deep water long lines where we grow oysters on long lines, a technique not seen as often in North America. We continue to push our farmers to try new techniques of cultivation to build a better, more sustainable food source for the future.
In 2006, we became part of the Taylor Shellfish Family of farms, a family with over 130 years of farming experience in the Puget Sound of Washington state. We are proud of the growth we have achieved as combined company and the standards for industry we have strived to uphold and push forward. We will continue to evolve and innovate farming to accomplish the highest quality shellfish we can produce.