CASCO BAY – Peter Stocks displays what looks like a bit of mud in the palm of his hand and gently swirls it with a fingertip.
With careful tending over the next 16 months, the tiny brown seeds would grow into a few dozen succulent mussels worthy of a creamy chowder or a lemon-garlic sauce.
But Stocks won't have to wait that long. In September, the former corporate lawyer anticipates harvesting the first 1,500 to 2,000 pounds of rope-grown mussels from his newly licensed rafts off Little Chebeague Island.
He holds one of his young mussels, its inch-long, deep-blue shell glistening in the July sun, and recites a sort of ode to the pointed bivalve that has consumed much of his time over the past year.
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