Or will be, if the Harbor District can open more of the bay for mariculture

4/5/12 

The oyster farmer stands in the stern of the small gray skiff, clear-eyed, a bit of smile on his wind-nipped, broad face. Weather’s supposed to turn nasty, but he’s just wearing waders over his jeans, a black cotton sweatshirt under his orange life vest, and a tan ball cap that doesn’t cover his ears.

With one hand on the tiller, the other in his jeans pocket, the farmer guides the skiff up a shiny channel between slick mudflats in North Bay, the northern bulbous extension of Humboldt Bay that nudges against Arcata. Low tide. He tips his chin at the sights: a flock of black brandts, flying in low across the bay to land in a dark-green eelgrass patch and begin nibbling. Earlier, the loon by the dock, an uncommon, speckled apparition; must be migrating through.

He slows the skiff, gently nudges its prow into a mudflat, and water clinks against the metal hull. Spread out on the exposed bay bottom before the skiff is one of his company’s oyster farms: rows upon rows of long ropes strung between short PVC pipes about a foot above the bay mud, with clumpy oblong shells woven into them every few inches. Algae and mud have coated everything in brown-green-gold, though here and there wink glimmers of pearly shell. It looks like a squat, murky vineyard. These were “planted” last fall, during a low tide, the farmer says. Though you can’t see them from the boat, each of the shells attached to the ropes has tiny oysters growing all over it; the little oysters are called “spat,” the big empty shell they’ve cemented themselves onto is called “cultch,” and together they make “oyster seed.” It’ll be two years, about, before harvesters can come in here, during a high tide, and haul the ropes in to collect the heavy adult oyster clusters.

Back in the open water, the skiff heading deeper into the middle of the bay, rain replaces sun and a rising wind whips the water into an alarming chop. The farmer, still standing, looks unperturbed. In command of his world.

Surely, this is the life. Following the rhythm of the tides, the ocean flowing in, flowing out, in, out. Inhabiting a world of birds and seals. Producing a food for th“It’s not the 1950s anymore; you don’t get to do whatever you damned well please,” says the farmer, whose name is Greg Dale.

As the southwest operations manager for Coast Seafoods, the biggest oyster grower on Humboldt Bay (and in California), Dale speaks from experience: Over a period of 10 years ending in 2007, in response to environmental concerns and increased regulatory pressures, Coast was forced to completely alter its harvest methods. It spent more than $1 million on permits and environmental reviews from at least nine local, state and federal agencies.

Coast could weather the expense. But smaller operators generally can’t — which is why, farmers say, there are only five growers on the bay using just 325 acres out of several thousand that could potentially support shellfish culturing.

The Humboldt Bay Harbor, Conservation and Recreation District has a plan to change that — to create a business park, of sorts, for oyster farmers by identifying a host of new sites, vetting them as a group for environmental compliance and pre-permitting them for the same culture methods currently used on the bay. The district would take on the regulatory risk, in other words. Once it completes that work, probably by 2014, the new sites would be leased out through a bidding process. Last year, the Headwaters Fund awarded the district a $200,000 grant for the spendiest part of this project — the permitting and review. It also had the district add a provision: a fee on top of the lease rate to squirrel away for future permitting costs. Now the district has to go identify those suitable sites.

The project has evoked cautious optimism from conservationists and created ripples of excitement among shellfish farmers and regulators alike — locally, regionally, nationally. Oh, and listen. Hear that? It’s the well-heeled, banging their empty plates on elegantly clothed tables, demanding more Humboldt Kumamotos.e sort of folks who care about where it comes from and how it’s grown — heck, not even able to keep up with their hunger.

A dream.

A dream, apparently, that few can afford. To hear this oyster farmer and others tell it, if you want to set up a new oyster farm on the bay — or expand an existing one — you’ll need buckets of money and the perseverance of a gull choking down a starfish to complete the slow-going, complex multi-agency permitting and environmental review process.

Not that current or prospective farmers necessarily disagree with the regulations, he says.