(This video has audio narration)

The harvest crew heads out of Portsmouth Harbor to the mussel growout site, 5 miles from the New Hampshire coast. Once there, the crew lifts the submerged longline and places it onto the forward hydraulic starwheel. A hand winch is then used to place the longline on the aft starwheel. The mussel growout ropes, which hang vertically down from the longline, are stripped of mussels by a custom designed and custom built mechanical harvester. Inside the hopper of the harvester, mussels are automatically stripped as the rope is pulled through a narrow opening. The mussels then slide down a chute and are placed in containers, which are iced and stacked on deck. At the Portsmouth Commercial Fish Pier, the mussels are loaded onto a truck for transport to a processing facility. There, the mussels are "declumped" and have their byssal threads removed. The mussels were returned from the processing plant 2 days later and were distributed to local seafood retailers and restaurants.