DEI was founded for fisheries stock enhancement purposes.

Clammer Mike Ashby holds a handful of Downeast Institute produced seed clams he is planning to grow in an upweller.

In 1987, to address the decline of eastern Maine’s soft-shell clam populations, the organization (that was known at the time as the Beals Island Regional Shellfish Hatchery), began producing cultured juvenile clams to reseed clam flats.

Since then, the organization has produced hundreds of millions of seed clams for coastal communities in northern New England.  DEI has developed techniques for hatchery production of soft-shell clams, as well as growing, overwintering, and seeding clam flats, and transferred those technologies to municipal shellfish committees, clammers, and the scientific community.

In addition to soft-shell clams, DEI produces other shellfish species such as quahogs, razor clams, Blue mussels, European oysters, Arctic surfclams, scallops, and lobsters.