King County recently approved a permit to install a 10-acre commercial kelp farm at the edge of the Fern Cove Nature Preserve. If the project can secure a permit from the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and a lease from the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR), Fern Cove will have a 10-acre rectangular grid (that’s the size of 7.5 football fields) floating some 1,200 feet from the mouth of Shinglemill Creek for at least 12 years. The anchored grid will feature more than six miles of surface and subsurface ropes, as many as 288 floats and up to 64 polyform buoys. Eight of those buoys are four-foot-tall navigational aids equipped with white lights that flash every six seconds and are visible for 2.6 miles.
I have lived in Fern Cove for 22 years, which makes me one of the more recent residents. A group of some 50-odd neighbors and friends from Cedarhurst Road, Burma Road and the Kitsap Peninsula have appealed the County’s permitting decision. Our nonprofit group, the Fern Cove Preservation Alliance, objects on a variety of procedural grounds, but each of them is rooted in one fundamental truth: Fern Cove is a special public place and should be treated as such.
The County, inexplicably, chose a fast-track review process that didn’t allow for any public hearings on this controversial and precedent-setting proposal. The County also failed to attach any conditions to the permit. So, no monitoring, no oversight, no plan or effort to track or assess any impacts on the resident and migratory shorebirds, raptors, endangered orcas, porpoises, seals, salmon and otters, or on the humans who live in and visit and cherish the Fern Cove Preserve. How careless of the County to be so casual with such a rare and pristine sweep of shoreline, a place that was purchased in 1994 with public funds and which the County itself has deemed “historic and iconic.”
Why here? That’s the question that baffles Alliance members. Surely there are more appropriate places in Puget Sound for a 10-acre commercial kelp operation. More secluded nooks that aren’t home to a beloved nature preserve and more than 75 families, many of whom have lived in Fern Cove for generations. Is the “historic and iconic” Fern Cove Preserve, indeed is any nature preserve, really the best place for a commercial business venture that will privatize 10 acres of public aquatic lands for 12 years, and perhaps far longer given the current enthusiasm (and lobby) around commercial aquaculture—more proposals are in the pipeline—and the fact that a lease can be renewed or transferred?
“Why does no one simply state the big picture?” asked a concerned neighbor of mine recently: “‘What is Fern Cove? Is it a pristine area to be preserved as is? Or, is it an aquaculture farming commercial waterway?’” That is a very good question.
As its name suggests, the Fern Cove Preservation Alliance is pushing for preservation. We have appealed the County’s decision. Our case will be considered by the state’s Shoreline Hearings Board starting on December 11, 2023.
Our hope is that the USACE and DNR and all agencies responsible for making decisions about our public lands and dollars will consider an alternate site; or an experimental designation that puts limits and conditions on any permit or lease; or at the very least, require open-minded and public discussions about how best to evaluate and lessen potential impacts of commercial aquaculture in Puget Sound.
If you’d like more information, please contact us at fern.cove.alliance@gmail.com.
Mary Bruno is an author, longtime Fern Cove resident, and a founding member of the Fern Cove Preservation Alliance.
Fern Cove Preservation Alliance 