Bangs Island Mussels planning for future of mussel farming in coastal Maine

The Moretti family took a leap of faith purchasing Portland, Maine U.S.A.-based Bangs Island Mussels in 2010, one of the oldest mussel farms on the country’s East Coast.

Matt Moretti purchased Bangs Island fresh out of graduate school with his father, sharing a vision to revolutionize the stagnant company and sustainably grow multiple species via aquaculture. More than a decade later, Bangs Island employs fifteen people producing mussels and kelp in Portland’s Casco Bay, sold to a national market.

“That's our goal. That's our mission. That's our drive. We want to produce the best quality food we can in an environmentally sustainable way, and mussels are absolutely that,” Matt Moretti told SeafoodSource. “We got into it because we realized that mussels can produce a super high-quality protein that's affordable for almost anybody and has very little impact on the environment. It's something you can really feel good about.”

Bangs Island uses the raft culture method to grow its mussels using 40 -by-40-foot floating platforms with 400 or more lines hanging underneath to collect spat and support the mussels through all stages of growth.

“We like to think of our size in number of rafts,” Moretti said. “In the beginning, we were seeing excellent results with the product, excellent results with customers, and we knew we were doing good things for the environment. So, we started just to go all in and reinvest everything we made from the company and just work our butts off for years and years until we grew business to big enough size where it’s able to support itself.”

In 2010, Bangs Island had three rafts, and since then has successfully expanded to twenty-six rafts, four boats, and increased kelp infrastructure with modernized technologies in a 5,000-square-foot warehouse. The company produced approximately 30,000 pounds of mussels in the Moretti’s first year, and more than 600,000 pounds in 2022. The first year growing kelp produced approximately ten pounds, and they produced more than 100,000 pounds in 2022.

When the Morettis purchased Bangs Island, the company exclusively sold...

Photo courtesy of Bangs Island Mussels