Posted on Categories Agriculture/Food System, Land UseTags ,

‘Oyster War,’ what really happened to Drakes Bay farm

Leilani Clark, PRESS DEMOCRAT
The phrase “Save Our Drakes Bay Oyster Farm” was all over west Marin County in 2013. Hundreds of hand-painted signs were posted in shop and residential windows, along roads, on bulletin boards, and in and around Point Reyes, a rural coastal enclave 30 miles north of San Francisco. Spearheaded by west Marin’s Alliance for Local Sustainable Agriculture, the “Save Our Oyster Farm” campaign gave voice to neighbors and local organizations who wanted the family-owned farm in Drake’s Estero to remain open, at its historic location inside the boundaries of the Point Reyes National Seashore.

Back then, the farm accounted for nearly 40 percent of California’s oyster production, and operated the last oyster cannery in the state. Notwithstanding legal proceedings litigated by a Koch Brothers-backed attorney, and support from Michael Pollan, Alice Waters, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the National Park Service did not extend the farm’s 40-year lease, and Drakes Bay Oyster Company closed in late 2014.

Journalist Summer Brennan stumbled onto the Drakes Bay Oyster Company fracas after being hired as a staff writer for the Point Reyes Light, a nearby local paper, in 2012. In short order, Brennan, a Point Reyes native who now lives in New York, was embroiled in the controversy, working late nights to discern fact from fiction, and clumsy science from sound policy.

“I found myself wedged between the National Park Service, wilderness advocates, and their defenders on one hand, and the Drakes Bay Oyster Company, the local agriculture, community and their supporters on the other . . .” she writes in her new book “The Oyster War: The True Story of a Small Farm, Big Politics, and the Future of Wilderness in America.”

Written in a style reminiscent of Rebecca Solnit — the San Francisco environmental writer with a keen ability for melding the poetic and the political — “The Oyster War” makes for a fast-paced and dramatic read about a messy situation with no clear-cut “bad guy.”

Read more at: ‘Oyster War,’ what really happened to Drakes Bay | The Press Democrat

Posted on Categories Agriculture/Food System, Land Use, Sustainable Living, WildlifeTags , , , , Leave a comment on Facing closure deadline, Drakes Bay oyster farm harvests final crop

Facing closure deadline, Drakes Bay oyster farm harvests final crop

Guy Kovner, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

The end of the oyster farm upholds a promise put forward decades ago in law to fully protect Drakes Estero, but it also severs ties to a cherished history of shellfish farming in the waterway.

By New Year’s Day, there should be no more oysters in Drakes Estero, a placid estuary in the Point Reyes National Seashore that has been, for the better part of eight years, the setting for a tempest of epic proportions.
Ranchers, environmentalists, scientists, food lovers and famous chefs, members of Congress and a bevy of lawyers have been embroiled in the conflict over a family-owned farm that planted millions of tiny oysters in the estero’s cold, clear waters and harvested $1.5 million worth of table-ready bivalves a year, continuing an aquaculture operation dating back to the 1930s.
Questions over the Drakes Bay Oyster Co.’s impact, good or bad, on the 2,500-acre Pacific Ocean estuary, and how the company was treated by the federal government, fairly or unfairly, raised passions that likely will persist for years in west Marin County and beyond.
Read more via Facing closure deadline, Drakes Bay oyster farm harvests | The Press Democrat.

Posted on Categories Agriculture/Food System, Land UseTags , Leave a comment on Oyster farm bid fails

Oyster farm bid fails

Mary Callahan, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

The U.S. Supreme Court refused Monday to take up the case of a Marin County oyster farm facing eviction from the Point Reyes National Seashore in what a lead opponent of the commercial operation called “the end of the road for this company.”

Drakes Bay Oyster Co. owner Kevin Lunny struck a defiant position, however, and vowed to battle on, calling the high court’s pass on his petition “a disappointment, but not really a setback.”

“Today, we’ve been delivered news that’s disappointing, but we’ll get over it. It’s not the end,” Lunny said in a news conference hours after the high court made its decision public. “It’s not over until the last oyster’s shucked.”

via Drakes Bay Oyster Company not willing to give up despite U.S. Supreme Court decision | The Press Democrat.

Posted on Categories Agriculture/Food System, Land Use, Sustainable LivingTags , , , Leave a comment on Marin judge blocks enforcement against Drakes Bay Oyster

Marin judge blocks enforcement against Drakes Bay Oyster

Jeff Quackenbush, NORTH BAY BUSINESS JOURNAL

In a move considered rare against California Coastal Commission enforcement orders, a Marin County judge on Thursday blocked commission enforcement orders deemed devastating to Drakes Bay Oyster Co., which harvests one-third of California’s supply.

Drakes Bay Oyster raised clusters of the creatures on wires, known as “strings,” submerged in Drakes Estero. The company feared that a California Coastal Commission order last year would force removal of the 95 such racks. (credit: Drakes Bay Oyster)

The west Marin oyster farm still has an appeal against a National Park Service refusal to renew the company’s lease in Point Reyes National Seashore, but attorneys for the farm hope the U.S. Supreme Court as soon as Monday will take up the matter.

In a 23-page judgment filed Thursday, Marin County Superior Court judge Roy Chernus ruled that the commission does have jurisdiction over the company’s operations, but it “abused its discretion” by issuing cease-and-desist and restitution orders without studying the environmental impact of the work needed to comply with those actions.

The commission contended that its requirements for the oyster farm to continue operating and do remediation were exempted enforcement actions, thus not needing an environmental impact report, or EIR, beforehand.

via Marin judge shucks enforcement against Drakes Bay Oyster – North Bay Business Journal – North San Francisco Bay Area, Sonoma, Marin, Napa counties – Archive.

Posted on Categories Climate Change & Energy, Sonoma CoastTags , Leave a comment on Concern about ocean acidity prompting new attention

Concern about ocean acidity prompting new attention

KQED Forum program on ocean acidification.

Mary Callahan, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

It’s been called the “evil twin” of climate change, an environmental peril so daunting and widespread that it could undo much of the world’s food web, undermine global nutrition and devastate coastal economies.

Ocean acidification, however, is often largely overlooked outside the circles of scientists, yet North Coast Congressman Jared Huffman is seeking to somehow change that and spur action on the issue before it’s too late.

Acidification of the world’s oceans, said Huffman, D-San Rafael, “is the biggest thing that nobody is talking about.”

Shellfish grown off the nation’s West Coast already display the ill effects of rapid changes in the ocean’s chemistry, an early sign that the health of the marine ecosystem could hang in the balance, Huffman said.

“You can’t really overstate the impact of this,” Huffman said at a news conference this week at Bodega Marine Laboratory that was attended by representatives from science, aquaculture and government.

“We’re very, very quickly approaching the tipping point, I believe,” Huffman said.

via Concern about ocean acidity prompting new attention | The Press Democrat.

Posted on Categories Agriculture/Food System, Climate Change & Energy, Sonoma CoastTags , , Leave a comment on Oyster company balances demand, climate change impact

Oyster company balances demand, climate change impact

Guy Kovner, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

With consumers wolfing down millions of its shellfish every year and clamoring for more, Hog Island Oyster Co. should be sitting pretty on the east shore of scenic Tomales Bay, a bountiful estuary abutting Point Reyes National Seashore.

Co-founder John Finger, a surfer-entrepreneur with a degree in marine biology, decided to farm the mile-wide and 15-mile-long bay due to its productivity and proximity to the Bay Area’s food-savvy multitudes.

Seeded by a $500 family loan in 1983, the oyster farm has prospered — propelled by a nationwide yen for raw oysters on the half shell — into a business that sells about $10 million worth of bivalves a year, employing about 120 workers who feel a bit like family themselves.

via Ground zero for future of oyster farming | The Press Democrat.