Photos by Michael Piazza

When the partners at Island Creek Oysters came up with the slogan “Eat all you want, we’ll grow more,” they did not imagine that demand for their Duxbury-grown shellfish would outpace their ability to farm it. But sometime in the decades since Skip Bennett planted his first clam and oyster seeds in Duxbury Bay, that is precisely what happened. Trade research shows the global oyster and clam market is now valued at more than $100 billion, with revenues expected to grow an average of 3.5% annually over the next five years. 

So, Island Creek has grown commensurately. CEO Chris Sherman has seen much of it, having joined Bennett in 2009 to manage the company’s wholesale business. Today, in addition to operating the farm and its own raw-bar-driven restaurants in Duxbury and Portland, Maine, Island Creek distributes oysters, American caviar and other sustainably harvested seafood to a robust network of chefs in Boston and around the country, and also sells its tried-and-true shellfish seeds to other New England growers. 

“That’s kind of been our main strategy,” Sherman says. “It takes a village to grow more, if everyone wants to eat it.” 

The latest venture from the vertically integrated seafood company—a canning facility in the Port of New Bedford—might be Island Creek’s most game-changing move yet. A major investment in a strategic location, the cannery not only diversifies Island Creek’s product line and gives the farm’s crops another channel toward revenue. It also provides consumers with healthy, shelf-stable seafood products that are grown, harvested and processed responsibly, Sherman says. 

On top of it all, what Sherman believes to be the East Coast’s first seafood cannery to open in a century is poised to help build a broader customer base for New England seafood on the whole. By marketing a relatively affordable, easy-to-enjoy (not to mention trendy) product to grocery-store shoppers and seafood lovers at home, tinned seafood will support the industry’s continued growth, Sherman says. 

“Developing alternative markets, rather than just upscale restaurants, is really important to the ongoing viability of the farmed shellfish here.” 

OPENING TINS OPENS DOORS 

Like many Americans, Island Creek’s CEO first tasted high-quality tinned fish while traveling abroad in Europe. Canned seafood was historically overlooked in the U.S., where tinned fish evoked oily sardines or cat-food-shaped cans of mushy tuna. But delicacies like mussels shingled attractively in a flat, rectangular tin, and slices of Spanish octopus preserved at its most tender are staples of the pintxos bars Sherman discovered while visiting Spain during his college semester abroad in Paris. Even as an undergrad, he appreciated the easy elegance of pairing seafood conserva with a fresh loaf of bread. 

A decade later, Sherman was opening the Shop in Portland in 2017, Island Creek’s first independent foray into restaurant operations. A seafood market situated in a historic, mainly residential district of the city where Island Creek stations its northern wholesale logistics, the Shop had enough space for dining in, Sherman says, but he wasn’t sure it could support a full restaurant. (Skip Bennett had been a partner to restaurateurs Garrett Harker, Shore Gregory and chef Jeremy Sewall at Island Creek Oyster Bar, which first opened in Boston’s Kenmore Square in 2010. In 2021, Gregory announced Harker and Bennett’s split from the restaurant group, which included Row 34, and Island Creek Oyster Bar closed its two locations. Row 34’s four locations remain open under Gregory and Sewall.) 

“I wanted to do a stripped-down raw bar concept that separated raw bar from having to go out for a $200, four-course meal,” he says. “I just wanted people to pop in, get some oysters and a glass of wine, and get on their way. But I realized we needed some additional food.” 

At the time, Haley.Henry Wine Bar—a unique little boîte without a hot line, nor even a kitchen, in Downtown Crossing—was getting a lot of buzz as one of the best new restaurants in Boston. Sherman recalls thinking, “Well, people like tinned fish there, so I tried it in Maine, and it was really well-received. That was the thing that set us on this path.” 

In 2018, Sherman received an Eisenhower Fellowship, which sent him to Spain and other countries to research aspects of innovative aquaculture, seafood production and canning operations. While in Europe, he met the folks behind Conservas Mariscadora, a 100-year-old cannery in Galicia, which resulted in the 2022 launch of Island Creek’s first line of tinned seafood products, all sustainably harvested from Spanish waters. 

“Now, we’ve been back three or four times and started importing direct from a lot of the producers,” Sherman says, “so we’ve step-by-step built our way into” canning single-origin seafood. 

CANS MEET DEMANDS 

Canneries serve a key role in seafood production where they are prevalent in southern Europe. “One of our challenges in seafood that I don’t think a lot of consumers understand is fluctuations between supply and demand,” Sherman says. Whether you’re talking about wild harvested or farmed seafood, “the best production, both from a volume and quality standpoint, very rarely lines up with peak demand,” he explains. 

Fall is generally the most abundant time in the ocean, because many animals are fattening up for a seasonal migration or hibernation. But typically, consumers crave seafood the most in the summer. “That’s a time of year when things are more focused on spawning, or they’ve just completed a big migration in the spring, so they’re a little more depleted,” Sherman says.

European seafood processors suffer from the same market volatility, but they’ve proven that having a cannery located near the fishery “is a great way to lock up that product when it’s at its peak quality,” Sherman says. It also adds year-round value by making products shelf-stable. 

Without a nearby option to preserve seafood, producers often resort to shipping overseas, where products will catch a better price on international markets. Imagine harvesting South American shrimp before shipping it to Asia to be processed, then shipping it to the U.S. to be sold frozen in grocery stores. “Structural constraints [of the seafood industry] create these kinds of murky supply chains,” Sherman says.

Being transparent about the origins of its conservas is one way that Island Creek is carving out a niche in the tinned fish industry. “With the co-brand that we did with Mariscadora, we made all the products single-origin from Spain, because that’s what consumers think they’re getting,” Sherman says. 

Beginning this summer with Island Creek’s first tins available for purchase through its online shop and retail partners—littleneck clams packed with confit garlic, chili and olive oil, sourced from longtime Island Creek collaborators Cherrystone Aqua-Farms in Virginia—the New Bedford cannery is carrying on that principle of transparency, and that’s a boon for the biggest fishing port in the U.S. 

THE WORLD IS YOUR OYSTER

Sherman has learned a lot over 15 years at the helm of Island Creek, but one major thing he’s learned is that demand for superior seafood is flourishing. Capacity for producing it is the thing that needs to grow now. 

Island Creek hired five New Bedford residents full-time to launch the cannery in June, and over the past few months has steadily ramped up production with assistance from additional part-time workers. Sherman anticipates introducing tins of Skip’s Surf Clams, a large mollusk grown in Duxbury Bay, for retail and wholesale this fall. 

Island Creek has also teamed up with one waterfront neighbor, Coastal Foodshed, to produce private-label tinned mussels for distribution this fall through the nonprofit food hub. A 501(c)(3) with a mission to make it easier for people to buy local foods, Coastal Foodshed connects farmers with consumers at its South Coast farmers markets and prioritizes serving communities that lack options for fresh, healthy food. 

The nonprofit is using part of a Local Food Purchase Assistance grant it received from the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources to buy larger volumes of local foods, including wild Chatham mussels canned by Island Creek, to distribute through a network of emergency food partners and reach thousands of food-insecure families across the South Coast, says Stephanie Perks, co-founder and executive director of Coastal Foodshed.

“Tinned fish supports Coastal Foodshed’s mission by enhancing food security and accessibility through its affordability and long shelf life,” Perks says. “It benefits local fisheries by creating markets for bycatch and adding value to seafood products. Its convenience and versatility make it an easy and nutritious option for the community, aligning with Coastal Foodshed’s goals of promoting local, resilient food systems.”

Since launching Island Creek’s 10,000-square-foot canning facility in June, Sherman says he’s had plenty of interest from other East Coast seafood producers about potentially working together, which has him optimistic. “The only way this works long-term is if it can really scale up, because there’s efficiency in scale,” he says. 

Meanwhile, the company is continuing to innovate in the world of seafood production, Sherman says, by investing in automating elements of the canning process to create higher-quality jobs for people working in the port of New Bedford, and also to get Island Creek products down to a more reasonable cost for consumers.

From developing and marketing its now-iconic oysters to lifting the veil off sustainable caviar sourcing, Island Creek has historically found success in demystifying products once thought of as inaccessible luxuries. By bringing tinned fish back to the East Coast, they’re just keeping the party going. 

“We don't want to just be fancy food for fancy people,” Sherman says. To achieve that goal, Island Creek Oysters will continue to grow.

shop.islandcreekoysters.com

This story appeared in the Fall 2024 issue.