In the four years since he bought the venerable 79-foot Sea Roamer, Lloyd Muckle has seen Sea Roamer Marine Services Ltd. expand and succeed beyond his wildest expectations.

This young, family-run company is now offering marine services that range well beyond the Sea Roamer’s original mandate, which was to carry out aquaculture services up and down Vancouver Island and coastal British Columbia. While the primary focus remains aquaculture, there are other areas of professional expertise that the crew of ten (including Muckle and his wife, Debra), with combined 70-years of aquaculture experience, regularly turns its collective hand to. These enterprises include dock building, transportation, marine construction, and the development of new properties, sometimes right from wilderness sites.

The work of the Sea Roamer and the Comox Brave and their crew is carried out primarily in the region between Campbell River and Klemtu on the central British Columbia coast, as well as Quatsino Sound on Vancouver Island’s west coast.

The bulk of Sea Roamer Marine Services work revolves around aquaculture, predominantly for Marine Harvest since that company’s merger with Stolt. And, with their recently acquired tug and crane barge, the company has been able to significantly expand its services to the fish farmers. Services that include the assembly of farms, the building of pen systems, feed sheds and the like. With the Comox Brave’s barge crane they are also able to haul up the huge pen nets, which tip the scales at 45 tons when hauled from the water. The crane, says Muckle, is one of the larger ones on the coast, and has proved invaluable in salvage work, another area that Searoamer includes in its job description.

"We're a progressive company," says Muckle. "And so far we've been able to keep half a step ahead of demands for our services."

Of equal importance, agree Lloyd and Debra, is the fact that this young company is also highly cognizant of the family concerns of the crew. Bearing that in mind, only half the crew is tending to a given task during a seven-day period, while the other half is at home with their families and friends.

"The seven and seven scheme works really well for everybody concerned," agree Lloyd and Debra.

The crew, with a combined experience quotient of more than 70 years, also has its family connections. The current man at the helm of the newly acquired tug is the third generation of his family to take the wheel of the same craft, and a fourth generation member, 16-year-old Robin Webber, is also learning the ropes with a goal to ultimately skipper the Comox Brave.

Muckle thoroughly believes in mentoring young people through Sea Roamer, but also emphasizes that their scholastic endeavours must not be allowed to suffer. Webber, for example, is completing his high school studies through North Island Distant Education.