56 Scientific American, May 2022
to reduce his electricity costs. This money-saving inno-
vation was a game changer.
“Bill’s system is ingenious and entirely scalable,” Lewis
says. It is the first time food has been created specifically
for bivalves with this technology, he says, and “it could
revolutionize the industry.” It also demands a very exact-
ing manufacturing process. “We feed the algae glucose
and grow it in a clean room under negative pressure to
avoid contamination,” Mook tells me as I watched a tech-
nician scrub and suit up like a surgeon in paper cap and
booties before entering the pristine space. “We harvest
the cells every seven days, spin them down in a special
centrifuge to preserve their structure, squeeze out the
water and freeze the paste in one-kilogram blocks.” Mook
opened a freezer and pulled out a Ziploc plastic bag of
icy green slime. “It took us 10 years to develop this,” he
said, then hustled us off to the “growing room” filled with
lab beakers, each containing a different variety of algae
in shades of green, yellow and orange.
Mook says oysters are more finicky than mussels,
another creature he has tinkered with. “Growing oys-
ters versus mussels is like growing orchids versus tulips,”
he tells me. “Mussels bring less money per pound, but
once you’ve got the infrastructure in place, they are a
lot cheaper to grow because, unlike oysters, the seed is
wild and free.” Townsend agrees. “Mussels grow at very
high density, they contain a lot of protein, and they are
a good source of omega-3 fatty acids and other nutri-
ents,” he says. “If we could get the whole world to eat
more mussels, we’d be in much better shape.”
Newell has spent decades trying to make that dream
a reality. Decades ago, when he got his start, musselOYSTERS from
Mook Sea Farm
grow in bags,
reinforced by
cages, that
are submerged
in the Damaris-
cotta River.