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He and his small team, who butcher and pack the invasive species that is rapidly populating the Chesapeake Bay, can barely keep up with the demand for his services.

“There’s not enough processors to handle� all the blue catfish “coming to the Shore,� Hargrove said.

Hargrove processes about 10,000 pounds two days a week and sells his product to the Maryland Food Bank and government institutions, such as correctional facilities.

On Tuesday, April 11, Hargrove said he had 20,000 pounds of fish come in at the dock and had to tell fishermen he couldn’t take any more until the following Monday.

“We are fortunate to have Nick down here at Phillips Wharf,� said Jeff Harrison, president of Talbot Watermen Association. “He did get USDA approved and is cleaning blue catfish, which is a really good thing.�

There are only three licensed USDA inspectors of blue catfish in Maryland, with one coming online soon on Kent Island, Hargrove said. But as of now he is the only USDA-certified inspector of blue catfish on the Eastern Shore, working out of his processing facility next to the drawbridge in Tilghman.

“It takes a lot to have a USDA verified facility,� Hargrove said, adding, “it’s a lot of red tape. And without the USDA sticker on the product, you're limited to where your markets are.�

“Once you have the USDA designation, that allows you to get into institutional markets like food banks and colleges,� Hargrove said. “Without that, you're running around to restaurants with 15 pounds here and 15 pounds there, and quite frankly, that's really not going to solve the issue with the blue catfish. It's a kind of fish that you need to feed the masses with.�

"There’s so many blue catfish coming to the Shore, and there’s not enough processors to handle them all," he said.

Hargrove, 36, lives in Wittman, where he runs Wittman Wharf, which sells fresh, local seafood, but not blue catfish.

At Tilghman, he points to his freezer log, cooler log, product receiving log and his daily checklists of the plant.

Hargrove must fill out pre-operational sanitation forms from safety protocols like hairnets or caps, employee health — “no fevers, no anything� — and everything from packing material to cleaning compounds.

“You go in that place, and you can eat off the floor of it,� Harrison said. “He had to use special paint. Everything is stainless steel. It has to be clean.�

From the moment fish arrive at the dock, safety and sanitation protocols must be followed. Hargrove must record batch numbers, names of fishermen and how many pounds they bring in, the type of species and the sanitary condition of the fish brought in by commercial watermen.

Currently, watermen can earn from 10 to 50 cents per pound.

“I can only buy two days a week,� he said. “If I bought every day I'd have over 100,000 pounds here. What am I gonna do with 100,000 pounds? We try to cut the fish within two days.�

Hargrove has to bring the batch’s temperature to below 40 degrees within 12 hours. Batch numbers are assigned to each box of fish, “so it's constantly tracked to the final end game. Then I have to put stickers on everything,� he said.

When workers are onsite, he must have someone in the facility who has been trained in a week-long hazard analysis training course and can monitor the facility.

Hargrove said he has never had to record a pathogen in blue catfish.

“Nobody ever has gotten a pathogen or sick from blue catfish ever,� he said. “This was all designed for poultry and meat processing, but because it falls under USDA, then it also circulates into the blue catfish.�

“I don't feed the catfish. They don't live in ponds like farmed catfish. I don't give them antibiotics,� Hargrove said. “Once a week (USDA supervisors will) take a meat sample. They send it off to a lab and they test it. It's never come back with anything throughout all the years and all the processors.�

The processing room is kept pristine, with constantly running water for rinsing work areas. Workers wear gloves, aprons and rubber boots. Deftly wielding sharp knives, they remove the fillets, set them aside on trays and toss what’s left of the fish into large bins.

Hargrove's workers live in Easton, but mostly in Cambridge. They work in Tilghman and Wittman.

The fish carcasses will be processed for cat food. Out of 10,000 pounds of fish, 7,000 will be carcasses — about a 25% yield, Hargrove said.

The fillets are then walked over to a small but powerful $14,000 machine that skins them before they are laid out on trays. At almost every point in the process, the fish are kept at USDA-required temperatures. The ice machine can produce up to 4,000 pounds in 24 hours.

“I’ve got to make sure that when I pack (the fish) out, it’s below zero degrees, and I also have to make sure (the temperature) gets down in a certain period of time.�

Security cameras and padlocks assist Hargrove in making sure no one tampers with the product.

“This room will be spotless every day — I mean, spotless,� he said. “This was an old oyster house. We had to completely renovate the whole thing.�

The ceiling and walls had to be replaced. Even the new $20,000 floor has antibacterial and antimicrobial floor paint.

“He has a lot of money invested in it, and thank God for people like that, because he’s a young guy and he sees there’s money to be made in it,� Harrison said.

Hargrove said he’s breaking even. Political leaders “need to give us the resources that we need so that we can take this thing and solve the problem for them, basically.�

“We’re happy to do it because it's not even for financial gain,� he said. “You got to tackle the enemy, too. So that's kind of why I got into it. You know, it wasn't just about the money."