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:

Monday, September 1, 2014

KING 5's Story on Burley Lagoon Geoduck Farm to Air Monday, 9/1 During 6:30 News

[9/1 update - corrected date]
KING 5's Janet Kim will air a piece on a proposed geoduck farm in Burley Lagoon on Monday, 9/1 during the 6:30PM news.

Right to farm?
Does Taylor Shellfish have "the right to farm" wherever, whenever, and however, in what the Shoreline Management Act has defined as the most fragile resource of the state, its tidelands? Does agriculture have the "right to farm" in a wetland? Does a timber company have "the right to farm" in a riparian zone?

Plasticizing Puget Sound tidelands will not save native species.
Should any tideland area in Puget Sound be allowed to be "plasticized" in the name of "aquaculture"? The shellfish industry believes so.

Is spraying herbicides and pesticides onto Puget Sound's tidelands a constitutional right?
Should tideland areas have herbicides and pesticides applied with helicopters because native species are an inconvenience to growing shellfish? The shellfish industry believes so.

Expanding the shellfish industry will only make ocean acidification's impact on native species worse.
If ocean acidification is, in fact, as severe a problem as the shellfish industry believes - and it may very well be - expanding the industry will only make it worse. Those millions of additional shellfish added to the waters will only make the dropping the levels of carbonate ions worse, putting additional stress on native species. Governor Inslee may have found a political gold mine for election purposes but as with all things driven by money it is taking him down the wrong road.

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