
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 a spot near 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. 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 wood was milled on the 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 to the 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. 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, and we’ll probably try some in Gorge Harbour. 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 run into health problems, but we haven’t had any. They’re growing robustly.We’re especially targeting the Asian live market.”
All photo except the podcast image by Roy L Hales
Links of Interest:
- Paul Muskee on Klahoose Aquaculture & QXMC – Cortes Currents (2023)
- Overview of Klahoose Aquaculture – Cortes Currents (2022)
- First Kelp harvest for Klahoose/Cascadia partnership – repost from National Observer (2021)
- The origins of Cortes Island’s Shellfish Industry – Cortes Currents
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