While many of us like to enjoy a batch of steamed fresh blue mussels on a chilly winter evening, few of us know the lengths that Atlantic Canadian mussel farmers go to in bringing them to market.
From the spring until fall, farmers harvest mussels by pulling up ropes that have been suspended in the ocean. But in the winter, it's not quite as straightforward.
Popular demand for mussels does not leave with the warm weather, meaning the supply must continue even when the farms are covered with ice. Someone has to harvest this delicious shellfish, and that's a job for the hardiest men and women of Eastern Canada.
Facing freezing temperatures, the farmers head out looking like an arctic convoy, bundled up and wearing polarized glasses to protect their eyes from the glare of the sun. A GPS leads the farmer to brightly colored poles in the ice that mark the mussel farm below. It's easy to get disoriented when you're a couple miles offshore in the all-white environment of the snow-covered ocean.
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