For most around Juneau, a ride out the road is the closest thing to a road trip our town has to offer. For Meta Mesdag, owner of Salty Lady Seafood, that ride down the coast is the commute to her family-owned and operated oyster farm settled right in Bridget Cove.
“It’s kind of magical out there,” Mesdag said. “One of the things that has ended up being really fun with the farm and special for our kids is being able to go and stay on the weekends. It just becomes Disneyland for these kids.”
For decades, Alaska has been a powerhouse in seafood production across the board. However, as fish stocks decline in the face of unsustainable practices and changing ocean conditions, recent years have brought uncertainty to the industry. Concerns about saturation of the market by international products and inefficiencies in seafood processing have some pivoting in a new direction: namely, oyster farming.
Alaska oyster harvest volumes increased by about 80% in 2024 to a record 2.4 million individual oysters, according to a McKinley Research Group report. With forecasts from this report projecting future growth of another 60% from last year into 2025, the oyster industry in our state is properly ramping up production.
Most of the oysters harvested in Alaska in previous years have come out of Southcentral Alaska. Kachemak Bay is a particularly strong producer and is home to Alaska Shellfish Farms, the largest producer of oysters in the state. According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, there are more than 50 Aquatic Farm Permit holders throughout the state capable of engaging in oyster farming, however, not all are operational.
With over 33,000 miles of coastline, 18,000 of which are here in Southeast, and a pre-existing, robust maritime workforce and infrastructure, the opportunities for oyster farming in Alaska are widespread and accessible. Here in Juneau, Mesdag has been operating her farm with her family since 2018.
“I had been doing photography and wanted to start a family business that the kids could grow up doing with us, and that would shape their childhood,” Mesdag said. Committed to providing her family with a lifestyle unique to Southeast Alaska, Salty Lady Seafood was born.
A night and day comparison to more harmful aquaculture practices like fish farming, oyster farming represents a regenerative way to increase local food production without harming the environment by introducing things like food pellets or invasive species into fragile coastal ecosystems.
“They’re filter feeders,” Mesdag said, “so they just eat phytoplankton in the ocean.”
The flavor profile of oysters is dependent on the condition they’re grown in, the location, and the handling. The unique marine ecosystem in Alaska makes for a really special product compared to oysters coming from other places in the country.
“I feel like they have a really bright, clean brininess to them,” Mesdag said of oysters grown in Bridget Cove. Our waters around Juneau are glacially fed and are notoriously rich in phytoplankton, so much so that they drive the annual migration of humpback whales to this region each summer. This nutrient density makes for a flavor profile totally unique to the area.
This form of commercial aquaculture has been around in Alaska since the 90’s, however, much of the growth seen in recent years is driven by people like Mesdag who are new to the industry.
“We did our first harvest in April in 2018 and I feel like it was like a very community-driven project,” Mesdag said. “The build-out and all the work it took to build the farm definitely was made possible by a whole lot of different people helping with different facets of the project.”
In this industry, there’s no instruction manual to follow and staying flexible is a big part of Salty Lady Seafood’s approach. Community support has been foundational to operations on the farm.
“It’s been really cool getting to build this company and have all of these really, really amazing young people with a whole lot of excitement and enthusiasm about what we’re doing come and become a part of our farm family,” Mesdag said. “The amount of charisma and enthusiasm and eagerness towards what we’re doing really pushes my kids and makes them feel a sense of pride in the farm.”
Natural reproduction won’t occur in Alaskan waters because of the cold temperatures, so access to high-quality, healthy seed is a constant concern.
“Not having to heat sea water makes it a lot more cost effective,” Mesdag says of seed cultivation. “All the oyster seed for our farm is produced in Hawaii where they can just pump in the sea water and propagate.”
Right now there are four shellfish hatcheries permitted to operate in Alaska. Just out the road in Juneau, the Ted Stevens Marine Research Institute has been working on a hatchery to spawn oyster broodstock in order to decrease reliance on imports from Hawaii.
Currently, Salty Lady Seafood’s Juneau-grown oysters can be found at Jerry’s Meats and Seafood and Super Bear. Once summer rolls around, they also supply the oysters in the popular downtown food truck plaza.
“Our goal is to have our products go from the water to the restaurant within 24 hours,” Mesdag said. “I don’t know that you’ll be able to find fresher seafood. It’s right here, it’s at the farm, and we pull it and we get it on ice right away. Then we clean it and pack it and take it to market, so when people are having our oysters, they are super, super fresh.”
Rachel Levy is a Juneau-based photojournalist whose work culminates at the intersections of environmental justice, arts and culture, and sustainable tourism. A 2022 graduate of Harvard University's Environmental Policy program, she is also the director of the award-winning documentary "Hidden in Plain Sight" that exposes the labor exploitation and colonial framework burdening Tanzania's safari industry.
