Inside the Virginia Institute of Marine Science’s Acuff Center for Aquaculture, beneath a steady flow of water, tens of thousands of baby mussels sat in a tank on a recent afternoon.
Facility manager Lauren Gregg picked up a bucket filled with the tiny creatures, which looked like large grains of wild rice.
“These guys, the larvae just crawl around, we’ve found, for four to six weeks until you can really start to see their growth take off,” Gregg said…