“It’s not as simple as tying a cage to a pier and then, one year later, eating oysters,” he warns. He even stocks some cages and floats on hand to help them get started. They get a tour of his operation - the equipment he uses, how he cultures the oysters, and his secrets for securing cages and preventing fouling. “I tell them to wear water shoes,” he says. Gagnon manages the website,, and acts as a mentor for the members.

He heads the Shellfish Gardeners of North Carolina, a group of enthusiasts who grow oysters under their private docks. Oysters aren’t the only things Gagnon nurtures. Gagnon, right, shows the oysters in his cages to Chuck Weirich, North Carolina Sea Grant marine aquaculture specialist, left. “We built our house here in 1994 to windsurf and ended up growing oysters,” Korin says. Skip Kemp, Hooper’s successor at the community college, also gave pointers. “She needed one more person to get the class to go,” Gagnon remembers. “I started with one thousand spat in three cages from Jim, using Styrofoam sheets inside the cages for flotation,” Gagnon recalls.Īnd things took off from there - aided by advice from other growers, Phil’s constant tinkering to perfect his growing system, and the help of an aquaculture class at Carteret Community College with Penny Hooper. On a suggestion from Jim Swartzenberg, a former commercial shellfish grower, the couple started growing the bivalves themselves. They began by harvesting their own oysters from the wild or buying them from local sources. Gagnon and his wife Korin moved to Emerald Isle from Raleigh. This gregarious man is quick to share his bivalve harvest with visitors - whether they are family, friends or strangers curious about his oyster garden - and to explain why, and how, he does it. “It’s a boost to the environment and provides habitat,” Gagnon says. To be sure, this Eastern North Carolina resident’s idea of a garden might be wetter than expected. How does Phil Gagnon’s garden grow? With silver fishes, and oyster shells in many rows. Phil Gagnon purchased this bag of spat for his fellow under-dock growers from the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Shellfish Research Hatchery.

Oyster spat purchase