Changes are coming for Hog Island Oyster Company, after the California Coastal Commission updated the company’s permits this month. Although the new permit terms mostly reflect the company’s current practices, they also authorize a possible doubling of Hog Island’s cultivated acres on Tomales Bay, and come with a series of new environmental mitigation measures.
The company, which has been operating since 1983, is the largest grower on the bay and the second local grower to update its coastal permits following a 2013 statewide initiative. Although that effort was meant to simplify and streamline the permitting process for shellfish growers, it also led to the discovery that many growers’ practices had slipped outside the terms of their coastal permits.
“Of the roughly 18 marine aquaculture operations in the state, about half were operating without one or more state and federal permits and much of the other half were operating out of compliance with the permits they had,” Cassidy Teufel, a commission staffer, said. Mr. Teufel said the commission brought four companies into compliance statewide, including Hog Island, and will bring two more during the coming months. Tomales Bay Oyster Company recently submitted an application, and Marin Oyster Company was the first company to update its permits, last May.
Hog Island obtained the commission’s approval in the early the 1980s and ’90s for activities on the four separate areas it leases, but the operation has evolved over time. “We’ve been making small changes for 30 years and, cumulatively, now that’s a big deal,” explained John Finger, president of Hog Island, which sells over six million oysters, Manila clams and mussels a year.
According to Mr. Finger, the company has remained largely in compliance with its coastal permits, though the adoption of blanket practices over time meant that some activities did not comport with individual permit terms. The coastal commission cited the company in 2017, calling some of its practices “unpermitted development” and requiring the amendments to existing permits.
Those amendments, approved at a hearing in Half Moon Bay on Feb. 8, standardize the types of species and growing methods across the company’s four leases, and expand the area the company may cultivate. Hog Island now has approval for the majority of cultivation techniques it uses, from old-school racks and bags that sit on the bay floor to more contemporary practices like attaching bags on intertidal long-lines that allow greater ventilation. But the commission prohibited both Hog Island’s use of stanway structures, a basket method of growing oysters that involves support posts, and the direct planting of clams into mudflats in order to minimize habitat disturbance during harvest.
The amended permits also allow Hog Island to more than double the 26 acres it cultivates, although that expansion hinges on the approval of the other regulating agencies that have jurisdiction on the bay—including the California Fish and Game Commission, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Regional Water Quality Control Board. (The company leases a total of 168 acres, but cultivation is constrained primarily by eelgrass, a species of special concern.)
The updated permits outline a series of mitigation measures, including surveying for eelgrass before any expansion, marking gear for identification, and debris prevention and recovery practices. They also require an annual report to the coastal commission. Mr. Finger said Hog Island already must submit an annual report to the Fish and Game Commission.
In an 11th-hour change, the commission also required that Hog Island cease cultivation on 1.2 acres that overlap with eelgrass habitat—a measure for which the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin lobbied.
The group’s executive director, Morgan Patton, praised the decision last week. “EAC is thankful for the Coastal Commission staff’s efforts to bring Hog Island’s permits up to date, uphold the Commission’s standard of review for development, and to protect sensitive eelgrass habitat in Tomales Bay,” she said in a joint press release with Hog Island. Ms. Patton said the dialogue between her group and Hog Island had led to the creation of habitat, as many species of fish and birds depend on Tomales Bay’s eelgrass beds.
Mr. Finger agreed that his work with E.A.C. employees, whom he said went out to the oyster beds and made a real effort to understand the operation, was beneficial. “You hear a lot about conflict these days, but you never hear when people actually work things through,” he said.
The statewide effort to streamline multi-agency permitting for shellfish growers was spearheaded by the Pacific Coast Shellfish Growers Association in 2013. The association launched the California Shellfish Initiative that year, kicking off a series of discussions—the first of which took place in Inverness—between state and federal agencies, shellfish growers and other stakeholders.
Yet Mr. Finger said such streamlining has not materialized. Instead, in 2017, growers began receiving violation notices from the California Coastal Commission.
The commission cited Hog Island for Coastal Act violations that year, including for the operation of all-terrain vehicles within intertidal mudflats, the disturbance of sensitive eelgrass habitat and the use of cultivation structures and equipment not described in its permits.
Mr. Finger disputed the violations, saying that although the company had experimented with A.T.V.s a few times, overall its approaches were in compliance with the Coastal Act and other regulations.