The Team
Dan Grosse
Dan has been farming oysters in Chincoteague for a dozen years. He also runs an environmental consulting firm, works for an oceans-related government contractor, teaches environmental management, and once worked as a terrestrial farmer. He was the first oyster farmer permitted to sell shellfish at Washington, DC farmers’ markets.
Kellen JW Singleton
After a teaching stint in Shanghai and a service year with AmeriCorps in the classrooms of DC - Kellen felt a special calling to get as far away from humanity as physically possible. A calling that naturally took him to the frigid and isolated oyster farming waters of Kachemak Bay, AK. Eventually finding his way back to the Lower 48 - a love for service, food, and sustainability brought him to the mean kitchens and flat-bottom boats of Washington DC, the Rappahannock River, and by providence - Chincoteague Bay. In his free-time Kellen enjoys art and emergency medicine.
Mike Handforth
Mike is an IBM engineer-turned-charter boat captain. He first captained a pontoon boat for Chincoteague Bay, and now a sport-fishing boat which he can also take into the ocean. A member of the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary, and former President of the Chincoteague Island Charter Boat Association, he took the lead behind his organization’s putting an artificial reef 4-5 miles offshore. He sits on a VA Marine Resources Commission flounder ad hoc advisory committee for recreational fishing, and has participated in VMRC’s fish tagging program for 15 years. He spent part of his youth in a rural school farm program with livestock and commodity crops.
Carroll Burt Cherrix
Carroll is a born and bred “Teaguer” whose family roots date to the 1600s. Many of his extended family have been watermen—that is, worked on the water—over the years. He worked at many of the island’s oyster houses, clam houses and crab sheds.
Dorothy L. Leonard
Dot is an internationally recognized aquaculture and shellfish restoration expert with over 35 years of experience in coastal and watershed management, aquaculture development, shellfish public health, shellfish restoration, coastal water quality and fisheries management. As Maryland Director of the Fisheries Service she developed an Oyster Restoration Program for Chesapeake Bay and established the International Conference on Shellfish Restoration.
