Our mission is to protect the habitat of Puget Sound tidelands from the underregulated expansion of new and intensive shellfish aquaculture methods. These methods were never anticipated when the Shoreline Management Act was passed. They are transforming the natural tideland ecosystems in Puget Sound and are resulting in a fractured shoreline habitat. In South Puget Sound much of this has been done with few if any meaningful shoreline permits and with limited public input. It is exactly what the Shoreline Management Act was intended to prevent.

Get involved and contact your elected officials to let them you do not support aquaculture's industrial transformation of Puget Sound's tidelands.

Governor Inslee:

Saturday, August 30, 2014

Burley Lagoon: Taylor Shellfish Acknowledges a Problem with Sedimentation

Is it dragging or dredging? Either way, it stirs up the mud.
Recently, Taylor Shellfish was asked why they were dragging what appeared to be an anchor in areas of Burley Lagoon. An employee from Taylor Shellfish responded that it was a set of chains which was being used in an attempt to uncover oysters which had been covered with silt, which "makes the oysters sink in the mud." He noted it was "a common farm practice." By dragging the chains it "brings the sunken oysters to the surface so we can get them." The employee continued:
It is actually pretty amazing how much fresh mud and silt can move around the lagoon depending on the weather and the tides. Sometimes our oyster patches will get totally covered after a rain storm and/or a big minus tide that creates strong currents.
He may have added "dragging chains along the bottom" as a cause of those "amazing" quantities of "fresh mud and silt" being moved around within the enclosed lagoon.

Pierce County may want to consider it when they begin questioning at what point shellfish activities in Burley Lagoon are no longer a "preferred use" of what the Shoreline Management Act considers the most valuable and fragile resource of the state.

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