Monday, January 10, 2011

It shouldn’t take an astrophysicist to fill out an application for a shellfish grant

That’s the opinion, at least, of John Baldwin, who learned how complicated it was when he applied for a deep water clam grant off Provincetown, Massachusetts years ago. First he had to stake out the patch he wanted to farm. Then there was the obligatory visit from state fisheries scientists, who investigated the area to make sure it was free of eelgrass and commercially valuable shellfish beds.

Then there were the disconcerting rounds of paperwork with the U.S Army Corps of Engineers, which practically made him do calculus (he had to convert all of his data into “thousands of seconds”) to get his permit. “I’ve got two grants now, so I’ve done it a couple times, and I know full well that it’s a process,” says Baldwin, a longtime diver and fisherman.

Wanting to spare prospective shellfish farmers the same sort of hassle he’s had to go through, Baldwin and his fellow members of the Provincetown Shellfish Committee, along with Truro’s shellfish board, have been working on a plan to make it easier for local people to get started in the aquaculture business. With help from the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies, they’ve mapped out a 50-acre area in Cape Cod Bay, near the Provincetown-Truro town line, which they hope to divide into town-licensed shellfish grants.

By doing all the permitting work themselves, and jumping through the requisite hoops at the state and federal levels, the towns would essentially be removing most of the red tape for residents who want to apply for the grants. “It would eliminate the bureaucratic layers that an individual has to go through,” says Tony Jackett, shellfish constable for both Provincetown and Truro. “They would just have to go to the town.” Read more...

This blog is written by Martin Little The Aquaculturists, published and supported by the International Aquafeed Magazine from Perendale Publishers.

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