By John Dodge

The Olympian

Commercial geoduck farms are cropping up all over the intertidal beaches of South Sound in response to a growing Asian market for the world's largest burrowing clam.

Advances in geoduck growing techniques have turned a harvest that used to occur only on native clams in the deeper waters of Puget Sound into some highly visible, and sometimes controversial, farming operations near the shoreline.

In Thurston County, residents of Zangle Cove near Boston Harbor are up in arms over the sudden proliferation of geoduck farms in their neighborhood - four since 2003.

They fear the farms, which feature thousands of PVC pipes stuck in the sand to house the baby geoducks, will disrupt the nearshore habit at, especially at harvest time when the mature geoducks - 4 to 7 years old - are blasted out of the sand with high pressure water hoses, temporarily turning the tideflats into a liquefied, soupy mess.

"It's one thing to talk about geoduck farming - it's another thing to see it," said Zangle Cove resident Kathryn Townsend. "It's an operation that's changing our shoreline."

Geoduck farmers, on the other hand, contend the tideland disruption at harvest time is short-lived.

"The disturbance isn't continuous," said geoduck farmer Brian Allen of Allen Shellfish, who operates three farms in the area. "After several tide cycles, you see the critters back."

Townsend and her neighbors are upset that farms are cropping up without county oversight or permits. They said the county planners should require the farmers to apply for a substantial shoreline development permit, which would create some review of a project's environmental impact and give neighbors notice of pending farms.

"We're asking for a moratorium on new farms until they figure this thing out," she said.

Historically, Thurston County has not required shoreline permits for geoduck farms, noted Robin Downey, executive director of the Pacific Coast Shellfish Growers Association.

Permit requirements vary county by county throughout Puget Sound, but more counties are starting to require shoreline permits for geoduck farms. About 125 acres of tidelands are leased in Puget Sound for geoduck farming by about 25 companies, Downey estimated. The bulk of the operations are in South Sound. They got started about 10 years ago following successes spawning geoduck seed in a nursery setting.

Thurston County recently decided to start requiring shoreline permits for geoduck farms in areas that have not previously been used to grow shellfish commercially, county planner Roger Geibelhaus said.

Geoduck farms are producing about 875,000 pounds of geoducks per year in Washington state, Downey said. That compares to about 4 million pounds of wild geoducks harvested from state Department of Natural Resources submerged tidelands each year. The two together are about half the world's supply, fetching about $10 a pound on the Asian market.

Geoduck farming has spawned opposition up and down Puget Sound, said Lauri Brauneis, a member of the Save Our Shorelines group in the Gig Harbor area.

"We're hearing from concerned citizens all over Puget Sound, Canada and Alaska," she said. "Geoduck farming is like the new Gold Rush."

In one area of just under 1 acre and encompassing two tideland leases, Allen has planted about 120,000 geoducks in PVC tubes, which are covered with netting to protect the clams from predators during the first year while the clams settle into the tideflats. The netting is usually removed after one year and the pipes after two years.

He has leased tidelands from Zangle Cove area property owners willing to house the farms in return for a share of the profits at harvest time, which can be anywhere from four to seven years after the baby geoducks are planted.

"I came home from work one day a year ago and there it was in front of my house," Olympia physician Eric Klein said. "It's a horrible eyesore. I wish they would take it out."

It makes no sense that he must undergo county scrutiny and pay thousands of dollars in permit fees to build a stairway to the beach, or a patio behind his house, he said. But the geoduck farms were allowed without review or permits.

The tubes, netting, ropes and stakes associated with geoduck farms generate marine debris and interfere with recreational use of the waterfront, including kayaking, swimming and water-skiing, critics said.

Geoduck farmers in Washington have adopted an environmental code of practices to reduce environmental impacts and ward off opposition, Downey said. For instance: