Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Paul Muskee has been working for QXMC for close to 15 years and the last decade of that has been with Klahoose Aquaculture.
 
“I feel like my life has led me this way. When I was younger, I did work in aquaculture and I did work in forestry. I was also a mining technologist for a bunch of years, but I grew up  around Powell River, Lund and Desolation Sound.  Running boats has always been part of what I've done. I've loved working for Klahoose. They've been a great employer and I really like the people I've gotten to work with,” he explained.  
 
“I started working in their forestry department. I was out in the bush, helping to engineer blocks, plan roads and timber cruising. When the Jimmy Creek project happened,  the development corporation picked up a bunch of pieces of that, running the 220 man camp, fuel supply for the project, barging,  and that's when I got pulled out of the bush and into the office.” 
 
“I've been helping to organize things ever since.” 
 
“I was also involved with our first tourism initiative, which was grizzly bear tours in Toba Inlet which is now grown into the Klahoose Wilderness Resort and Gorge Harbour.” 

CC: When did QXMC come into being?
 
PM: “It was before my time. I see the incorporation date, 2007. Cortes Cortes It was probably set up under Chief Ken Brown. The Development Corp, I believe, would have been Klahoose's initial engagement with the power companies in Toba Inlet.” 

 CC: How did you become involved in Klahoose Aquaculture?

 PM: “Before my time, Klahoose had already embarked on acquiring aquaculture tenures and geoduck aquaculture, which was actually quite an innovative step because  geoduck aquaculture is quite a new thing, still is. There's a lot of unknowns to it, and that was one of the things that I was asked to continue pursuing once I was working in administration.”

“Geoducks take about seven years to grow. A lot of things that can happen in that time. It's all underwater aquaculture, so you can't closely monitor your stock on a day to day basis.”
 
“We tried to draw on the advice and the knowledge of others that have done it. We tried to improve that and we still don't know exactly how successful we'll be because those plantings are still on the bottom from six years ago. We tried to give the seed every chance at health, so we boosted their growth inside Squirrel Cove and baskets of sand before planting them out in the deep.”
 
CC: Where is the principal market? 
  
PM: China: when we harvest geoducks, sometimes the divers will finish diving around two in the afternoon, and by that night those geoducks will already be on a plane to China. Everything has to move quickly. It takes a lot of coordination to meet boats, to meet trucks, to meet processing plants, and out to the airport. Ideally they can drop the geoducks in a live tank”

More about clams, oysters, seaweed and geoducks in podcast

Cortes Currents

Paul Muskee on Klahoose Aquaculture & QXMC

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - Anyone visiting Squirrel Cove right now can see a series of freshly constructed rafts anchored close to the government dock. There were four of them when Cortes Currents first noticed, and another two being built on the beach. Now they are all in the Cove. There are piles of lumber and floats nearby, and a huge pile of hoop-like ‘lantern nets’ waiting on the Squirrel Cove Dock.   

“We're leasing the spot off of the store this month to do the building because it's the most practical place,” explained Paul Muskee, Operations Manager for Klahoose Aquaculture. 

A well known member of the local aquacultural community, Erik Lyon of Rising Tide Shellfish, has been on the job site. 

Paul Muskee: “The rafts are being built by our partner Rising Tide, a bunch of folks from the island and Kenny Hanuse from the village. 100 They will be holding lantern nets, that will  hold the scallops.” 
  
“One of the cool things is between the Klahoose Sawmill and Blue Jay Lake sawmill, all the word was milled on island. That's a good news story. Originally, when we had planned for these rafts, the Klahoose Mill wasn't operating, so we budgeted to bring wood on island  from somewhere else.” 

CC: How long do you expect this project to take? 

Paul Muskee: “Just a couple of weeks.  I think they'll be done pretty soon. There's I think they're building 10 or 12 rafts. So our original design was for larger rafts, eight rafts, but we've abridged the design, so we're going to get a few more rafts out of it. 

CC: Where are they going to be deployed? 

Paul Muskee: “We’re going to try a few different spots: Teakerne Arm, at our Klahoose tenure up there, we'll probably try some in Gorge Harbor.  Those will be the two main places. The thinking is to spread the risk in case there's a health issue in one area, the other area will still be hopefully covered.” 


“These are all going to expand Klahoose's scallop program. We're pretty excited about scallops. It's been going really well. I know different scallop programs have ran into health problems, but we haven't had any.  They're growing robustly.We’re especially targeting the Asian live market.”

The Scallop Rafts Being Built At Squirrel Cove

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New tracks tagged #scallops