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8/19/11

Humboldt Bay's oyster industry is hoping to expand on its success as a state leader in oyster farming -- by encouraging new oyster growers.

The Headwaters Fund recently awarded a $200,000 grant to the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District for a mariculture expansion project. The project is designed to help the oyster farming industry grow within the bay by helping it conduct pre-permitting studies.

Harbor District CEO David Hull said the goal is to find a project that will result in measured expansion, avoiding negative impacts while creating local jobs and expanding a productive industry. He said the proposal was put together after a series of community meetings identified it as a need.

”The entire mariculture industry in Humboldt Bay supports this as well as the shellfish growing associations up and down the coast,” Hull said. “It's a great collaborative effort between a public agency and the shellfish industry -- it's just a great win-win kind of a thing.”

Essentially, the district would go through the permitting process for mariculture plots and then lease the “pre-permitted” property to farmers, allowing farmers to side-step a lengthy and expensive permitting process.

Coast Seafoods Co., the largest provider of oysters on the North Coast, started its permitting process in 1996 and lasted through 2005. Coast Seafoods Co. General Manager Greg Dale said he spent more than $1 million on studies and fees.

He's hoping pre-permitted plots will encourage a type of oyster business park in the district. While this could be a double-edged sword -- more plots could mean more business to buy Coast Seafoods' seeds or more competition -- Dale said he sees it as a way of economic growth. He said his company may also lease new plots and expand its business.

”We've already spent the time and the money, and the effort over the years to make good water quality,” Dale said. “If we can open up some ground, we can grow that can grow oysters. It's as simple as -- if you open up the ground, you can produce jobs.”

According to industry representatives, the oyster industry has between 56 to 65 full-time jobs with a payroll exceeding $1.4 million. Farmers currently lease 325 acres on the bay, out of the approximately 18,000 farmable acres. Industry surveys estimate that 1.2 jobs can be created for every six acres put into production.

Dawn Elsbree, Headwaters coordinator, said the project is “a perfect example” of the kind of project Headwaters wants to support. The Humboldt County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the grant on July 26.

”A group of oyster farmers came together to discuss what they could do to remove a costly regulatory barrier to expanding their industry,” she said in a press release. “They found a public sector partner in the Harbor District and came to the Headwaters Fund with a well thought out and feasible plan that has a direct link to job creation.”

The district will set pre-approved guidelines such as the density of the cultures, the number of oysters per acre, the number of long lines per acre, technique options and limitations, Hull said.

First District Supervisor Jimmy Smith, a former harbor district commissioner, said he believes there is room to expand the industry but cautioned that it has to be done in a way that doesn't negatively impact other bay-dependent industries, recreational opportunities or wildlife.

”We just need to make sure that it's all balanced and all those uses and species get consideration, but I'm happy to see they're doing a detailed analysis of sites,” he said.

Ronald Fritzsche, a former harbor district commissioner who headed the mariculture monitoring committee set up during Coast Seafoods Co.'s permitting process, agreed and added that he hopes the studies also look at other types of mariculture, such as other shellfish or green algae.

Fritzsche said oyster farming has come a long way, and the farmers have been good stewards of the bay. He supports the proposal.

”It took a number of years working with the oyster industry to help them and get the culture methods where they are now,” he said. “It's a healthy industry, and I would support oyster farmers.”

Dale said shellfish farmers are grateful to the communities that strive for good water quality, allowing for prized oysters.

”The more people care about oysters, the more they care about water quality,” he said.

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8/17/11

As executive director of the Coastal Commission, Douglas championed public access to the rocky bluffs and sandy beaches. With the muscle afforded by the state's landmark Coastal Act, he preserved natural habitat and battled developers, moguls and celebrities with visions of private beaches. And, despite making powerful enemies, he survived in a political arena as rugged as Big Sur.

Douglas, 68, is moving on to a different kind of fight. He's suffering from lung cancer and went on medical leave Monday with plans to retire in November. Few state officials have left a bigger mark than Douglas, a World War II refugee from Germany, made on his adopted home. And his departure ushers in a period of uncertainty for an agency that has roots in Sonoma County.

Douglas may have said it best when he informed the commission of his plans at a meeting last week in Watsonville: “The irony of our work is that our greatest achievements are the things you don't see. It's the wetlands that haven't been filled. It's the access that hasn't been lost. It's the agricultural lands that haven't been converted. It's the highly scenic and environmentally sensitive habitat areas that haven't been spoiled or destroyed.”

The Coastal Commission grew out of public frustration with restrictions on beach access in Southern California and growing interest in closing off swaths of the North Coast with exclusive developments such as The Sea Ranch.

Douglas has been there from the start. A longtime resident of Marin County, he co-authored Proposition 20, the 1972 ballot initiative that created the commission. As a legislative staffer, he worked on the Coastal Act, the 1976 law that made the commission permanent and empowered it to regulate development in coastal zones. He joined the agency and became its executive director in 1986.

Some of his biggest battles have been in Southern California, where the commission prevented a freeway from splitting San Onofre State Beach, and along the Central Coast, where it secured public access at Pebble Beach and San Simeon. Closer to home, it helped establish Tomales Bay State Park.

Douglas hopes that Charles Lester, his senior deputy, will succeed him. Given the political battles that have been fought over pricey coastal property, there's likely to be pressure to pick someone from the outside.

Whichever avenue the commission chooses, former Sonoma County Supervisor Mike Reilly said Douglas' influence will be felt for years to come through the policies crafted and legal precedents established during his tenure.

“Peter always said the coast is never protected, it's always being protected,” said Reilly, who served on the Coastal Commission for 12 years. “And that's going to continue to happen in large part because of the groundwork he's laid.”

That's a fitting legacy for a champion of California's coast.

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8/17/11

Ashley Donnell and her fellow students stood on the banks of Klamath River silently watching their professor and Yurok tribal officials inspect the body of the gray whale -- known as “MaMa” -- who died Tuesday after spending months swimming under the U.S. Highway 101 bridge to the delight of visitors and locals.

For 56 days, the undergraduate in Humboldt State University's Marine Mammal Education Research Program watched the 45-foot-long giant and her calf. Donnell was there three weeks ago when the calf separated from its mother and headed downstream. She was there when the whale took its last breath at 4:19 a.m.

”It's hard for everybody,” Donnell said. “Especially the community. They were all enamored by her.”

The whale had stationed herself near the bridge since late June, delighting throngs of motorists and tourists. Until Monday, biologists said her condition was typical of a female gray whale that had just weaned a calf. Then, the whale took a turn for the worse.

The whale was swimming in tight circles and drifting downstream when Donnell and her peers arrived at the bridge about 10 a.m. Monday. At 6:30 p.m., the whale beached herself on a sandbar about 200 yards south of the bridge. Later that evening, the whale was able to right herself and swim back up to the bridge, but she later stranded herself on the same sandbar.

HSU marine biology professor Dawn Goley was with the whale when it died, Donnell said.

On Tuesday, Goley and members of the Yurok Tribe used an excavator and other large pieces of equipment to move the whale to a shallower part of the river. Goley and biologists with the National Marine Fisheries Service, the North Coast Marine Mammal Center and the Yurok Tribe will conduct a necropsy to determine the cause of death, she said.

After weeks of monitoring the whale's behavior and condition, Goley said, scientists could see no outward signs of trauma. The necropsy will show if the whale suffered from internal trauma.

”This was one of the few opportunities we've had to see gray whales up close,” she said. “We learned more about this gray whale, and we learned a lot about the Klamath River.”

Goley said the barnacles gray whales typically have on their skin when they're in the ocean were gone from the Klamath River gray whale on Monday, and her skin was showing signs of wear.

According to Sarah Wilkin, stranding coordinator with the marine fisheries service, the Klamath River gray whale was first observed by scientists in 2001. She was included in a catalog of gray whales photographed in Baja California, Wilkin said.

”We all wanted a happy ending,” she said. “We wanted the whale to return to the sea, but she didn't. In my mind, it means there probably was something wrong with her physically or medically and this -- in some ways -- was the best ending that could happen.”

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8/5/11

The Oregonian's editorial "Timber country and you" (July 24) places the interest of the timber industry above the public's interest in clean water, wild salmon and healthy watersheds. The editorial ignored what science tells us about the impact of logging roads on the survival of wild salmon.

Those roads and stream crossings discharge large amounts of sediment pollution into salmon streams, degrading habitat and creating an impediment to the recovery of salmon across the West. A 2008 study prepared for the EPA confirmed that poorly maintained logging roads increase mortality of adult and juvenile salmon by increasing the amount of fine sediment in streams.

The recent decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, NEDC v. Brown, is a major step forward in addressing this long-standing problem. That decision will require the timber industry to get permits where they are discharging polluted stormwater from active logging roads directly to a river through a ditch or culvert. The permit program will apply to a small subset of logging roads that have the worst impacts on salmon habitat.

The court's decision in no way threatens the 25,100 jobs directly related to the timber industry (numbers from the Oregon Employment Department that conflict with the number of 125,000 claimed in the editorial). In response to the court's decision, a state-led permitting program would let local agencies such as Oregon's Department of Environmental Quality design permits for logging roads that take into account local conditions and proximity to salmon streams. The permitting process could recognize that the public has an interest in this issue and build in adequate accountability and transparency. Similar permit programs have been implemented all over the country for numerous industries, none of which have suffered dramatic job losses as a result.

Every Oregonian has a personal stake in clean water and salmon. We are investing billions of dollars in salmon recovery while at the same time we are being told to ignore one of the impediments to that goal. But it is more than just salmon recovery that is at stake; salmon-dependent communities and economies are also at risk.

The decision by the 9th Circuit Court will bring a long overdue measure of balance between two resource-extracting industries: timber harvesting and salmon fisheries. But there are those who oppose a balance and want to tilt the advantage back to the timber industry and let the salmon fisheries continue to bear the cost. Sen. Ron Wyden's proposed Clean Water Act exemption for the timber industry is clearly an attempt to circumvent the 9th Circuit's ruling and prevent any semblance of balance. It is an attempt to maintain the status quo, which has a century-long history of salmon impoverishment. It's the wrong policy and unfair to salmon-dependent communities and unfair to Oregon citizens who are spending so much of their time and money to recover local runs of native salmon.

Through its long history, The Oregonian's editorials have generally supported salmon, their wise management and their recovery. But in this case, it appears politics trumped science to the detriment of healthy rivers and salmon, both of which are important to the citizens of Oregon.

Chris Winter is an environmental attorney with the Crag Law Center who worked on the NEDC v. Brown case before the 9th Circuit. Bill Bakke is the executive director of the Native Fish Society. Jim Lichatowich is a fisheries biologist and author of the book "Salmon Without Rivers -- A History of the Pacific Salmon Crisis." 

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