Organic Fertilizer From the Sea With Ann Molloy of Neptune’s Harvest

February 25, 2026·20 min·2 clips

Ann Molloy discovers fishermen and farmers are the exact same breed, with identical hands, skills, and complaints.

Host Doug Stephan introduces Ann Molloy as the co-owner of Neptune's Harvest, a company based on the working waterfront of Gloucester, Massachusetts, the oldest working seaport in America. Molloy is third generation in the family fishing business; her son and nephews represent the fifth generation. Gloucester is described as an island of 30,000 people connected by three bridges with a 400-year history of commercial fishing. Molloy describes realizing that farmers and fishermen share the same character: same dress, same hands, same ability to improvise repairs, same dependence on weather, same frustrations with government regulations, and the same habit of claiming poverty regardless of income. The family fish business, Ocean Crest Seafoods, buys entire boat trips from independent captain-owned vessels, grading fish by quality and size. The fertilizer business arose from a waste management crisis: when a Gloucester pet food plant closed in the 1980s, the company was paying fishermen to haul fish scraps — called gurry — back out to sea for ocean disposal. Molloy's father and a University of Massachusetts Marine Station contact developed a hydrolysis process to convert the gurry into fertilizer. A machine was purchased from Norway; Norwegian engineers came to Gloucester for a month to install it. The process sends gurry through a hopper and auger, hydrolyzes it in tanks using natural fish enzymes and high-powered motors within 24 hours, stabilizes the result with phosphoric acid to a pH of 3.5 for indefinite shelf life, and screens it through a 150-micron screen. The finished product resembles chocolate milk and carries an NPK of 2.4 to 2.5, plus micronutrients, trace elements, amino acids, vitamins, enzymes, minerals, and natural growth hormones and omega oils. Molloy addresses skepticism about the low NPK by pointing to soil-building benefits: improved drainage, increased yield and nutritional value, carbon sequestration, and atmospheric nitrogen draw. Application rate is one part concentrate to ten parts water, at two to three gallons per acre per application using flood jet or boom jet nozzles, with a water flush afterward. Neptune's Harvest distributes nationally via two company-owned 5,000-gallon tanker trucks, plus 75-gallon totes and 55-gallon drums, reaching farms in Montana, Nebraska, Texas, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, and New York.

As heard by us

A practical farm conversation about organic inputs, survival, and making do with what is close at hand.

American Family Farmer keeps its feet on the ground. Doug Stephan opens with farm memory, then turns to Ann Malloy of Neptune's Harvest, and the conversation lands where it should: what small family farmers can actually use, afford, and trust.

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