WILD MAINE MUSSELS

Our Johnny’s Blues wild Maine mussels promise to exceed your  expectations and redefine any preconceived notions you may have concerning  cultivated mussels.  Unlike cultured mussels, which are grown suspended in  the water column (an intangible vertical plane running from ocean floor to  surface) Johnny’s Blues mussels spend their entire life in their natural  habitat, on the ocean floor.  Our wild Johnny Blues mussels are grown in  meticulously managed beds, located at the very fringe of the intertidal and  subtidal zones.  The coast of Mid-Coast Maine provides an ideal natural  habitat for mussel grow-out.  The first part of a mussel’s life is spent  as a free-floating entity which is carried by the ocean’s currents.    While at the end of their larval (spat) stage, the mussels attach themselves to  a stable and sturdy object (a rocky outcrop, a piling of a pier, the hull of a  boat, even the occasional lobster) by strong sinewy anchor lines know as byssal  (byssus) threads.  Here the mussel will remain for its life,  filter-feeding bits of organic matter and plankton from the ceaseless wash of  the tidal current provided by the nutrient rich Gulf of Maine.