Cert. denied – Looking forward to an Estero without miles of racks, plastic bags

Click on the words above “Cert. denied” to see this entire post.

The supreme court issued their orders this morning.

On the list of cases denied a hearing, Drakes Bay Oyster Company.

Now to get DBOC to clean up the mess they bought/created along with the lease.

Let’s hope they break with what seems to be the tradition of the oyster industry and actually do the right thing and clean up the mess they made while making a profit from the public waters of the State of California.

Read about other local oyster growers and the mess they either created, bought, continue to create or are beginning to clean up, here, here, here and here.

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Save our Tomales Bay – part 17, TBOC gets after it in a big way

Click on the words above “Save our Tomales Bay – part 17, TBOC gets after it in a big way” to see this entire post.

As you may have noticed if you’ve been keeping up with the Series “Save our Tomales Bay…”, I have a big problem with people that trash the planet. Same goes for companies that those people often hide behind in the courts.

Apparently Todd and his crew at Tomales Bay Oyster Company do too!

The images below, recorded on 16 May, show the latest of a few big days where the TBOC staff made time to pick up the mess left behind by a previous oyster farmer whose lease they purchased.

Todd tells me he has removed over 3000 of the PVC pipes you see in the images. He likely has several thousand more to go. He tells me he plans to remove those soon. And I believe him.

Kudos to the TBOC crew for their efforts at being a good steward of the very bay they depend upon for their livelihood. The same bay that hundreds, perhaps thousands of species called home long before humans decided to complicate matters with all our trash.

Oyster farmers in California pay into an escrow account when they lease an area. Those funds were designed to be used to pay for cleanup under certain conditions. The problem as I see it is, that fund is inaccessible due to complicated rules. So, the cleanup that should be taking place, especially when leases change hands, never happens. Witness the messes we see in Tomlaes Bay, Drakes Estero and all along the Marin coast, thanks to Johnson’s oysters [now Drakes Bay Oyster Company].

I plan to work with the Fish & Wildlife Commission to change the language in the lease agreement so that no more of these messes get left behind. More on that later.

If the people pushing the California Shellfish Initiative want to expand oyster farming up and down the coast of California, they best get on board with lease agreements that have teeth, stopping all the finger pointing between present and past lease owners over who made the mess. Better yet, define best practices for all oyster farmers such that the mess does NOT get made in the first place.

Anyone that wants a copy of the current lease agreement in use, and is willing to help modify the language to ensure a clean California coast, send me a note and I’ll send you a copy.

As always, click on an image to see a much larger version.

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Next related post may be found here.

Previous related post may be found here.

See the first post in this series “Save our Tomales Bay” here.

River otters

Click on the words “River otters” above to see this entire post.

While visiting a favorite area today, I came upon a troop of river otters.

I’ve seen one or two here before, never this many.

How many can you see?

As each one came down to the pool of fresh water, it performed a brief ritualistic dance, relieved itself, then slipped in for a bath. Each successive otter smelled the ejecta of the prior otter before commencing its own dance.

Learn more about river otters here

Enjoy