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:

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Surfrider Announces Washington Coastal Marine Advisory Council (WCMAC) Meeting this Wednesday (12/9)

“We’re all in this leaky canoe together…”
Washington Policy Manager.)

When: Wednesday, December 9th, 9:30am–3:30pm
Where: Port of Grays Harbor Commissioners Chambers, 111 S. Wooding St. Aberdeen, WA
View Full Agenda: 12 9 15 WCMAC Agenda Draft

Surfrider has announced the Washington Coastal Marine Advisory Council (WCMAC) will hold their next meeting this Wednesday (12/9) in Aberdeen (see here for past meetings, agendas, and meeting notes). Scheduled to speak at 12:30 will be Kim Patten from Willapa Bay.

Native species are a nuisance to non-native
"crops" of Pacific oysters and Manila clams.
Kill the shrimp, create a habitat for 
Japanese eelgrass, kill the eelgrass.
Really?

Eco-engineering so non-native species can be grown for profit.
Among the speakers noted on the agenda is Willapa Bay's Kim Patten with Washington State University. He will present his perspectives, and the shellfish industry's, of how to deal with what he and shellfish growers perceive as a problem to the industry and their profits: native ghost shrimp. It was Mr. Patten who was one of the primary driving forces behind the proposal to spray the neurotoxin imidacloprid (one of the neonicotinoid pesticides) on shellfish beds and the herbicide imazamox, currently being sprayed on shellfish beds and eelgrass.

Plastic bags are bad, but this is okay?
What you can do when you "advocate" for clean water.

Plastic bags are bad. But is PVC or mesh nets in the tidelands okay?
Gus Gates, Washington Policy Manager, has written a piece on describing the shellfish industry as being some of the "...strongest advocates for clean water protections.." There is no question the shellfish industry wants to have clean water, which they need in order to maintain and/or grow their profits. But how can Surfrider, in one hand, ban plastic bags, styrofoam, micro-plastics, and be opposed to the oil terminal proposed for Grays Harbor (providing "80-85 permanent, family-wage jobs"), and in the other hand, support an industry who "advocates for clean water protections" which results in their growing widespread use of plastic and PVC in those same marine waters which Surfrider is trying to keep them out of (providing jobs of questionable need, with mechanization likely to reduce whatever jobs those may be)?

Mechanical harvester and the jobs it replaces.

"Mining" for geoduck.

Is it the canary or the mining we should be concerned about?
Mr. Gates is correct in pointing out we are all together in a leaky canoe trying to improve the health of Washington's waters. But make no mistake on why the shellfish industry is such a strong advocate for clean waters and what the result will be. They advocate for clean water to improve production and profits from Puget Sound's tidelands, and along with them, the spread of plastic and PVC used in production, and the transformation of habitat. Noting the industry's analogy of being the "Canary in the Coal Mine" without noting the impacts from mining ignores the important part of that analogy we should worry about.

Get involved. The shellfish industry, advocating for clean water, has behind it their stated plan of "tripling the size in our business over the next 8 years." (Jeff Pearson, thanking Wells Fargo for their providing financing.) Consider what will come with that.





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