East Coast Shellfish Growers Association June 2024 Newsletter

New Product Spotlight:
Ketcham Supply Partners
with Saeplast and
Aqua Production Systems
by Ann Kane Rheault,
ECSGA Newsletter Editor
When Bob Ketcham founded Ketcham
Traps back in 1975, the business primarily
catered to commercial lobstermen and fishermen,
selling the first wire-mesh traps, rope
and wire-coated mesh from their factory and
store in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
In 2016 Bob retired and his daughter Heather
decided to purchase the company, “after a
lifetime of heated fisheries talk at the dinner
table.” She is well qualified to run a business
of this size and scope: she earned a Business
Management degree from the University of
Massachusetts, Dartmouth, and pursued
graduate studies at Babson College and the
University of California, Berkeley. Heather
is highly attuned to the needs of the industry
and says that she gets some of her best ideas
from visiting farms and talking to growers.
Since those early days as “a fisherman’s candy
store” the business has changed its name
to Ketcham Supply and added an impressive
array of innovative aquaculture gear to the
mix. It is now a full-service shellfish-aquaculture
gear supplier, selling nearly every
type of equipment growers could possibly
need: floating cages, mesh bags, vinyl-coated
wire, ropes, closures and clips, tools, buoys
and more. And now they’ve added one more
category to their aquaculture repertoire:
insulated coolers and recirculating bins from
Saeplast.
Heather recognized an industry
need for insulated coolers that
make it easier to get oysters
on ice in order to comply with
regulatory and best-practice recommendations
geared towards
preventing Vibrio outbreaks. She
also realized that, “recirculating
bins for wet storage and depuration
are becoming increasingly
important to help growers manage inventory
and sell product when their growing site is
closed.”
To that end, Ketcham Supply has partnered
with Saeplast to distribute their full product
line 1 in the U.S. The new DWS352 recirculating
bin (94-gallon capacity) and its predecessors
the 405 (109-gallon capacity) and 705
(158-gallon capacity) are made of doublewalled,
food-grade polyethylene filled with
polyurethane. The modular design makes for
easy stacking and includes forklift access.
AQUA PRODUCTION SYSTEMS
Aqua Production Systems makes a mobile
recirculation-chiller system that can hold oysters
for up to six months. Their shower decks using
Seaplast DWS352 wet-storage containers can
be stacked up to four high. APS uses exact
calculations of the new-water requirements,
biomass heat transfer, shower-head aeration and
energy-efficient chilling to keep the water at 2°C.
The DWS352 multi-function shellfish wetstorage
system can be stacked four or five
high under a continuous flow of water raining
down from above, providing clean water
and oxygen to the shellfish in all the containers.
These bins have a larger, standard palletsize
footprint of 48" x 48" and come with
lifting handles on each corner. (For more
details on the DWS352 see the article in the
April 2021 newsletter 2 ).
Ketcham Supply is currently working with
Aqua Production Systems, a Canadian
company that designs, manufactures, installs
and maintains live-storage and shower
systems for seafood processing. APS sells
a mobile system for use with the Saeplast
DWS352 wet-storage containers, which it
says can hold oysters “for up to six months
using shower-head aeration and energyefficient
chilling that will keep your water at
2° Celsius.” APS will also custom-design recirculating
systems that can maintain water
temperatures from 0° to 30° C.
The Saeplast connection
Saeplast Americas Inc. is a division of Rotovia,
with headquarters in Dalvik, Iceland,
and a rotomolding manufacturing plant for
—Continued on page 9
Sustainable Oyster Farming Systems
516 US Highway 70 West
Havelock, NC, 28532
tel: 1-888-412-8948
email: sales@submurge.com
www.submurge.com
SAEPLAST
False-bottom grids in the Saeplast
bins allow mud and dirt to wash
away from shellfish, and securely
lock into place along all four sides
to ensure animals don’t fall through
into the muck.
ECSGA Newsletter Issue 2 June 2024
Page 7