NORDLAND — Commercial shellfishing along Mystery Bay’s shores on Marrowstone Island will continue, the result of a plan to reduce the number of boats mooring in the area.
The collaborative agreement among government agencies, tribes, shellfish growers and local residents was reached last week, said Brady Scott, aquatic lands manager for the state Department of Natural Resources.
Commercial shellfishing in Mystery Bay has long been a major source of revenue in Jefferson County and Puget Sound — contributing about $77 million a year.
Shellfish are also important to the bay’s ecological health, officials said.
“This plan was developed to ensure a healthy aquatic environment and help keep shellfish sites working,” Scott said.
“This plan will be a way to balance the diverse uses in the bay, while protecting Puget Sound.”
The plan “would not have been possible without the unprecedented involvement of numerous stakeholders,” he added.
Stakeholders will meet this fall after boating season ends and again in the spring of 2011 to weigh the success of the plan.
It will be considered a complete success if there are no closures because of too many boats.
It will be judged a significant success if there are less than three closures because of the number of boats and if the closures are no more than 14 days each.
But if closures are too numerous, or are for too long a period of time, the group will reconvene within 30 days to evaluate the problem and take action, if necessary.
The state Department of Health had been considering limiting or prohibiting commercial shellfish operations in the area because the number and location of unauthorized boats and mooring buoys in the bay exceeded national safety standards for a commercial shellfish growing area.
The National Shellfish Sanitation Program standards are designed to prevent contamination of shellfish that could harm human health.
An excessive number of boats — 10 or more — mooring in an area can produce enough sewage or other discharge to contaminate shellfish.
As the steward and lease managers of state-owned aquatic lands, including portions of the commercial shellfish beds in Mystery Bay, DNR began meeting with stakeholders in 2008 to find a workable and sustainable solution to keep the shellfish site open after concerns were raised by the state Department of Health.
Outer bay closed last summer
The outer bay was closed last summer to commercial shellfish harvest, outside a line between Griffith Point and Mystery Bay State Park, but the inner bay was left open.
Seven mooring buoys removed last year, six of them in inner, one on the outer bay.
“The big thing on the inner bay is, it is where they hold their shellfish on the beaches, but have some beds on outer,” Scott said.
“If that was shut down, that would have had a huge impact.”
The result of the effort is the Mystery Bay management plan, intended to help resolve use conflicts within the bay between boaters and shellfish harvesters.
The plan includes:
• Permitting and managing future boat moorage to ensure that commercial shellfish beds do not have to be closed.
• Removal of buoys that do not have permits from Jefferson County and are not authorized by DNR.
• A method of exempting boats and mooring buoys owned by shoreline property owners from the marina threshold counts.
• A way to manage transient boaters through a voluntary “No Anchor Zone” and to develop information that directs transient boaters to dock or moor in Mystery Bay State Park.
• Plans to develop a long-term boat monitoring plan to assure that the numbers and densities of boats do not exceed the marina threshold counts.
• Developing management strategies to address changes in the bay and its usage as they occur.
The plan says that, as of January, several unauthorized buoys have been removed, and the Jefferson County Marine Resource Committee and the stakeholder group have begun to develop a monitoring plan.
Stakeholders include the Jefferson County Marine Resources Committee and Departments of Community Development, Natural Resources and Community Health; Marrowstone Island Community Association; state Departments of Health, Natural Resources, Fish and Wildlife, and State Parks; Army Corps of Engineers; Pacific Coast Shellfish Growers Association; treaty tribes; and the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission.
A draft of the final plan can be found at http://tinyurl.com/yake2j5.
________
Port Townsend-Jefferson County Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
