This solar-powered barge can process thousands of oysters a day

When the sun shines down on Salt Bay in Nova Scotia's Yarmouth County, it's now helping with the processing of oysters.

One of the largest oyster operations in the province is now using solar power on a new barge they recently built that sits anchored in the waters off the community of Lower Eel Brook.

"For us it changes everything that we do," said Nolan D'Eon, owner of D'Eon Oyster Company Ltd. "Now we don't have to come to shore, we just bring all the boats to the barge here and pass everything through our system."

D'Eon said close to $150,000 was spent on the new barge, which includes solar panels that power a new oyster sorting machine from Australia.

They can now process tens of thousands oysters on a good day. Most are undersized and are returned to grow cages for another year in the water. Those thatare market size aretransported to the U.S., Ontario and Quebec.

The company grows its oysters at the bottom of Salt Bay. When the time comes, the cages are pulled up and theoysters are washed in a hopper before being put on a vibrating mesh table that weeds out the smaller ones.

Those that remain are directed into the sorter, a tube-like machine that divides them by size and drops them into buckets.

D'Eon Oyster sells between 750,000 and 800,000 oysters a year. With the process now running smoother and more efficiently than before, D'Eon said he hopes his company can hit the one million mark.

So far, the oyster sorter is working perfectly with the solar panels.

"We've been running it for eight hours a day, five days a week and we haven't had any issues yet," said Colten D'Eon, operations manager forD'Eon Oyster.

"We can actually run this machine for two consecutive days even if it was pitch black outside."

The solar panels are attached to a dozen large battery packs that store power. When the sorter was installed, a crew from Australia came to Yarmouth County to set it up.

"They came down here with the machine and we brought the barge in to shore, they installed it inside the barge and made sure it was in good working order before they went back home," said Nolan D'Eon.

The Atlantic Fisheries Fund contributed a portion of the funding for the new barge components. The fund will invest over $400 million over seven years to support Canada's fish and seafood sector.