A deep dive into Chris Mateo’s Chadwick Creek Oysters farm

The long road to the Chadwick Creek Oysters farm feels manicured by the sea, wind-swept with ocean air. Between Mesic and Vandemere, just off Highway 304, the gravel road stops suddenly at a formal gate, then continues through wispy sea grasses and pines to a simple dock where two men wearing rubber boots are hard at work. No buildings are in sight.

“Welcome to WAY down in the county,” says Chris Mateo when he sees me. A ball cap covers his gray hair and he squints in an ever-present smile. He bought this land in 2009 — 100 acres, including 8 acres of deeded water bottom, which makes this shellfish growing area private.

“I couldn’t believe a place like this still existed — away from the masses, along the beach. I fell in love with the area,” Chris says.

Chris grew up in upstate New York but his wife, Kelly, has roots in Bayboro. When Chris bought the land he had no training in oyster farming. He bought a few properties and decided to turn this property into his family farm. Now he supplies 70 percent of the oyster seed to North Carolina growers and is the president of the North Carolina Shellfish Growers Association. He also sells market size oysters to the shucking and half shell markets.

“Moving sharp rocks is basically what we are doing — don’t need food or medicine, only mother nature,” he says as he explains the oyster farming process. “It’s probably more akin to ranching — only need to stop predators (crabs mostly) and make sure the oysters have good water flow and space to grow.”

And oysters are amazing for the environment. They naturally cleanse the water. Oysters are filter feeders, eating algae and removing other nutrients from the water. An adult oyster can filter upwards of 50 gallons of water per day, he says.

John Sharp, a large man moving heavy baskets and carefully transferring oysters to other baskets, stops to scratch his back on a pole. A man of few words, he came to the county several decades ago as a Marine and races street stock cars on the weekends.

John picks up a pressure washer and continues doing what he’s done most of the day — spraying off bubble-like tunicate, invertebrates also called sea squirts, from all of the baskets.

“There is a romantic idea of what oyster farming entails … but in reality it is a lot of physical work,” says Chris.

Chris explains that in the past year or so they have seen more tunicate and more ocean fish in the creeks. Usually the salinity is 15 parts per 1,000 but it has nearly doubled to 26-28 parts per 1,000. Pure ocean is 32 parts per 1,000. This means that the whole estuary has changed, becoming saltier than normal, whatever “normal” means, he says.

Chadwick Creek, where the farm is located, is 5 miles from where the Neuse River meets the Pamlico Sound, just off the Bay River. This means it is 1 mile from the sound, leading directly to the ocean.

“This creek is Z shaped so it’s pretty well protected. The inter-coastal is right there. But few passerby boaters even know we are here growing oysters. The entrance to the creek is like the entrance to the Batcave,” Chris tells me.

Bald eagles and dolphin pods are his usual cohorts on his quiet days at work.

Chris walks over to a series of two on-land fiberglass nursery systems full of water.

“These are oyster babies I bought at 2 mm. They stay in their silos in these tanks until they grow to 4 mm,” he says. There are 900,000 oysters in 12 silos. He gets his oyster seed (or “spat”) mainly from Virginia because there aren’t commercial hatcheries in North Carolina. Hatcheries are the riskiest part of this business and very science-intense, Chris says.

Once a day he drains the mesh-bottomed silos that contain oyster seed and sprays down the little oysters, then refills the nursery tanks. The baby oysters feed on a continuous supply of raw water pumped from the creek. Oysters growing on the east coast of the U.S. are one single species, Crassostrea virginica or “eastern oysters.”

“Beauty of oysters is that they are like grapes. It's about what’s in the water, what they are eating, the salinity, that makes them taste different than another. So an oyster from here tastes different from one in Beaufort or Wilmington. Go just 2 miles from here and they will taste totally different,” he explains.

From the on-land nursery tanks, the oyster seed graduate to the “floating upweller system” or FLUPSY. These floating nursery system looks similar to a floating dock, but they have integrated fiberglass silos, a trough, and a raw water pump. The oysters stay here for two weeks and two months, depending on how fast the oysters grow.

When the oysters are 12 mm, they go into “the field” (the creek) in floating baskets clipped to floating lines.

“Once the seed reach 1 inch, we either plant them in bags in bottom cages, or sell them to other farmers,” Chris explains.

The oysters are sorted by size using a metal tumbler with different size holes. This process is called grading. If an oyster is below the hole size on the screen or tumbler, it falls through to its own container.

Under an awning on the pier, John pours baskets of oysters in one end of a hopper that feeds the tumbler while it’s rotating. The oysters slowly work their way through the tumbler to the other side. The process sounds like hail on a tin roof, almost drowning out the sound of Tom Petty on the beat-up radio tied to a piling.

Chris hops on his homemade barge to collect and rotate the larger oyster cages in the creek in the main “grow-out area.”

He tells me that the pandemic was tough on the oyster industry, as it was for many.

“No restaurants were buying,” Chris says. Before COVID, Hurricane Florence had wrecked most oyster farms in North Carolina. Several events made it clear to Chris that he had to diversify locations, so he built a second farm near Harkers Island called Siren’s Cove Shellfish.

Back at the pier, a strong wind rustles the shade awning and sends fast ripples down the creek. A handful of clouds billow thick and white against the blue sky.

Chris rinses off his boots. Near a tumbler basket, a small crab scurries down the dock, running away.

“This is my sanctuary,” he says.

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