Aquaculture Regulations, Fall Town Meeting Warrant on the Selectmen's Docket

Habormaster Chad Hunter is suggesting three amendments to the proposed aquaculture regulations he proposed two weeks ago.

Aquaculture, or shellfish farming, is becoming a strong business on the South Shore in recent years. Duxbury's Island Creek Oysters are popular in Boston restaurants and Kingston's Rocky Nook Oysters have come onto the market this past summer.

According to an Old Colony Memorial article two weeks ago, most of Plymouth's shellfishing areas have been shut for decades because of pollution concerns. In Kingston, seeding shellfish was one of the ways the town mitigated the pollution off Rocky Nook after the state required the town to install a sewer system on Rocky Nook and required all Rocky Nook residents to hook up to it.

With that town's harbor and shellfish beds now clean, the town has offered a relatively small area to potential shellfish farmers by lottery.

Under the regulations Hunter proposed, an acre of coastal water would be leased for $75 per year.

The revenue from those leases could then generate, at best, $20,000 annually, based on the town leasing close to 100 percent its 226 acres of “farmable” mudflats.

The selectmen would be the licensing board but they would only render a decision after the shellfish constable (the harbormaster) and the Conservation Commission had reviewed an application and a public hearing was held.

At that point, there would still be additional hurdles for applicants to overcome, including a review by officials from the state’s Division of Marine Fisheries to be sure that the plans did not negatively impact native shellfish, eel grass or navigation.