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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:
[Update 1/10: "In my opinion, it's the problem with the form and our inability to put more
specific information on it." Bill Dewey, Taylor Shellfish explaining why the "debacle" resulted after Chinese testing showed arsenic and paralytic shellfish poisoning in geoduck above levels they consider safe. Or was it political? If the Chinese wanted to make a political point they could have made a far stronger point by ordering Airbus jetliners or timber from Russia. What the shellfish industry may want to consider is that testing shellfish in the US could be improved, not only for the Chinese but for US citizens as well. Anyone who has suffered through vibriosis contracted from from Puget Sound's oysters would most likely agree.]
[Update 1/7 5PM: Added table showing levels of inorganic arsenic found in geoduck samples. Shown is a "whole" sample (D1) which was above China's .5 ppm*. This was not mentioned in the 1/6/2014 DOH press release below, nor were the higher individual samples (e.g., B2 being ~1.75 ppm vs the 1.175 in the table below).
*Note: EarthFix has reported the World Health Organization is said to be considering setting safe levels for inorganic arsenic in food in the .2-.3ppm range in 2014. In addition, they also noted this: “I’d be nervous after a big rainfall event,” said Kathy Cottingham, a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Dartmouth College who studies arsenic exposure and human health. “With soils that contaminated you need to worry about the episodic events of a big rainstorm or snowmelt causing pulses into the water.”
