Two Vashon entrepreneurs are working to establish the area’s first commercial kelp farms — separate endeavors, coincidentally unfolding at the same time — that could mark the beginning of a new chapter for aquaculture in central Puget Sound.

Their projects are different in scope and approach, but both men — Mike Spranger, founder of Pacific Sea Farms, and Mike Kollins, founder of Vashon Kelp Forest — see their enterprises as socially, scientifically and ecologically beneficial, efforts to grow healthy food for a hungry world using none of the inputs that make other forms of farming problematic.

Their 10-acre farms, if they get the green light, would be situated in Colvos Passage — Spranger’s site is offshore from the forested bluffs just west of the Tahlequah ferry dock and Kollins’ is near Fern Cove, an island preserve on the northwest side of Vashon.

Both projects, however, face serious opposition from environmental activists and neighborhood groups — islanders who say they fear the business ventures could have unforeseen consequences. They’re worried that a whale could get entangled in the longlines used for kelp growing, that lights flashing on the two sites’ navigational buoys all day and night will add to the region’s growing light pollution, and that permitters have not engaged in a full enough review to guard against other environmental harms.

A key decision that could shape the future of kelp farming in Puget Sound is expected any day.

In January, Spranger got the permits he needed from King County to apply for an aquatic lease from the state, the last step in a complex permitting process. But Sound Action, a regional environmental advocacy group focused largely on the Sound’s imperiled whale populations, appealed, resulting in an eight-day hearing before the Shoreline Hearings Board in May. A decision is expected by the end of the month.

While the legal dispute centers on Spranger’s project, Kollins — who received a critical permit from King County last week — noted that if Sound Action is successful, his project would likely be affected, as well. “If it’s ruled that Spranger’s farm is a risk for marine mammal entanglement, it would be hard to imagine ours moving forward,” he said.

Both sides use strong and at times emotional language to describe what they think is at risk.

Amy Carey, who helms Sound Action and is well-known for her tireless campaign against the Glacier industrial gravel pit on Maury Island more than a decade ago, calls this issue “some of the hardest work I’ve ever faced.”

She said she loses sleep at night because of her fear that a Southern Resident killer whale could be harmed or killed by one of the lines of rope the projects will install for kelp-growing — especially at Spranger’s site, considered a high-use area for whales. So imperiled is the population, she says, that even one death could cause it to spiral toward extinction. “The stakes are so high,” she said.

Spranger, in response to Carey, says he’s confident his project won’t harm whales. Like other kelp farms, he won’t have dangling ropes, which sometimes ensnare whales, but taut lines anchored into the substrate — a technique that has prevented whale entanglements at other aquaculture sites on both the West and East Coast. “I have three kids,” he said. “If I thought I was going to kill a whale, I couldn’t face them.”

On the north end of the island, several neighbors have formed the Fern Cove Preservation Alliance to voice their concerns over Kollins’ project, which he characterizes as part commercial enterprise, part restoration project. Neighbors balk at that description, saying Kollins is greenwashing a commercial operation.

“No one is against bull kelp restoration. But you’d think if you wanted to do restoration, you’d do a one- to two-acre project, with careful monitoring. But it’s not that. It’s a 10-acre commercial farm … That’s not science,” said Mary Bruno, who lives next to Fern Cove and has helped to spearhead the neighborhood alliance.

Kollins, for his part, takes issue with the neighbors’ accusations, saying he’s been transparent from the get-go. He’s working closely with researchers, including the Puget Sound Restoration Fund, a nonprofit that hopes to use his site to advance much-needed bull kelp research; at the same time, he says, he plans to fund the effort by harvesting kelp for commercial production.

“We’re absolutely a for-profit enterprise,” he said. “But we’re not maximizing profit. … The truth is, if there weren’t researchers interested in doing research at the site, we wouldn’t be doing this.”

Why kelp?

The debate on Vashon is unfolding at a time of keen interest in kelp as a commercial product and mounting concern over its far-reaching decline.

Popular as a food source in other parts of the world, commercially grown kelp has recently become something of a phenomenon in the United States, especially on the West Coast, where kelp farming is beginning to take off. Both the Washington Post and New York Times recently ran long pieces on the surging interest in kelp farming; the Post, in a piece focused on Alaska, called kelp the state’s “newest gold rush.”

Kelp, a kind of seaweed, is rich in dietary fiber, omega-3 fatty acids, amino acids and vitamins. Sugar kelp, native to Puget Sound, can be eaten fresh or dried, turned into a snack, used as a sweetener, added to cosmetics or made into biofuel. Bull kelp, also native to the Sound, is not as commonly used as food, but it, too, can be canned, pickled, dried or used in other ways — such as a thickening agent for salad dressings or paint.

But kelp are also a critical part of Puget Sound’s nearshore environment, and bull kelp’s well-documented decline in Puget Sound — 80 to 90 percent over the last century — has raised alarm. Agencies, tribes and nonprofit organizations have teamed up to try to address the situation, recently developing a 110-page conservation and restoration plan focused largely on bull kelp.

Last year, the state legislature added urgency to the issue, passing the Kelp Forest and Eelgrass Meadow Conservation Initiative, which directs the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to create a plan to conserve and restore 10,000 acres of kelp forest and eelgrass meadow by 2040.

Jodie Toft, deputy director of Puget Sound Restoration Fund, which is actively engaged in kelp restoration, said bull kelp are critical components of the Sound’s nearshore environment, underwater forests every bit as important as our terrestrial ones.

Bull kelp are canopy-forming, she said, meaning they extend from their holdfast on the seafloor to the water’s surface, where their bobbing bulb and undulating blades create a living canopy.

Fish — from tiny forage fish to large salmon — thrive in these underwater forests. At the same time, these massive vegetative structures support a complex food web; marine mammals and birds feed off of the fish, crustaceans and other invertebrates that hide in the kelp forest.

Kelp is a fast-growing annual plant, absorbing carbon and other nutrients as it grows. As a result, they’re also important to regional environmental health, potentially slowing climate change, ocean acidification and harmful algae blooms.

“What bull kelp are doing is serving as alchemists, taking carbon from the environment and transforming it into food and habitat,” Toft said. “They’re really important.”

Vashon Kelp Forest

Kollins, the former chief operating officer at PATH, a global nonprofit based in Seattle, lives with his family in a waterfront home on Burma Road, overlooking the site where he hopes to establish his farm.

He said he was drawn to the idea of kelp farming after he became aware of kelp’s decline and found there was considerable science about the importance of kelp but a dearth of research about how to restore it. “We decided to see if we could build a model for research that’s financially sustainable,” he said.

He says his project, Vashon Kelp Forest, is in “the best spirit of a social enterprise” — a for-profit business with social or environmental objectives — and one he believes will be successful. “There’s an insatiable demand for kelp,” he said. “Right now, there are at least three different companies that have said they’ll buy everything we produce.”

Kollins’ project received one of its last key permits on Friday, when King County issued him a Shoreline Substantial Development Permit. He still needs approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, as well as a lease from DNR.

If permitted, he said, his 10-acre farm will be situated at an angle about 1200 feet to 1800 feet from the shore nearly directly in front of Fern Cove. He plans to grow only bull kelp, harvesting about 30 percent of it, he said. The rest will stay on the line for scientists to study whether farmed kelp can help regenerate declining populations.

Some environmental organizations support Kollins’ effort, including the Puget Sound Restoration Fund and Washington Sea Grant. Vashon Nature Center, while neutral on the issue of the two kelp farm projects, is supporting a University of Washington graduate student who is collecting baseline data at Kollins’ site.

Toft said her organization is already researching bull kelp restoration in Puget Sound and will continue to do so — the organization is not dependent on Kollins’ project going forward. At the same time, she said, his project affords the scientific community an excellent opportunity.

“One of the big questions is when you grow bull kelp, will it reproduce on its own the next year? We want to know if we can do this in areas that are depauperate of bull kelp — can we start that restoration flywheel again,” Tolt said.

Kollins’ site, she said, “offers that opportunity. … Really qualified folks are looking at this as a smart way to move forward and answer core research questions.”

Kollins said the benefits of kelp production are well-documented and endorsed not only by local organizations but also several national ones, including The Nature Conservancy and the World Wildlife Fund.

“I’m super concerned about climate change and the marine ecosystem,” he said. “The fact that we could help nonprofits find a way to stem the tide and address this challenge is hugely exciting and invigorating and why we’re doing it.”

But many neighbors are concerned about the project and its potential impacts. Last fall, during the county’s comment period over Kollins’ permit request, 80 percent of the 75 homeowners who submitted comments expressed concerns or raised questions, said Bruno, one of the residents who formed the Fern Cove Preservation Alliance.

Should Kollins get a lease from the state, it will last for 10 years, Bruno added. “We’d be remiss as neighborhood people, preservationists and Puget Sound residents not to ask some questions.”

During a walk to Fern Cove, Bruno and Karen Davis, another resident, noted the quiet beauty of the preserve, an expansive estuary where Shinglemill Creek empties into Colvos Passage. Owned by the Vashon Park District, Fern Cove is rich in birdlife and fisheries, including coho and chum salmon.

Part of their concern is the precedent an approval would establish. According to some reports, there are dozens of such farm proposals in the queue. “If they can approve a 10-acre commercial kelp farm here, in front of all these homes and a nature preserve, they could approve them anywhere,” Bruno said.

“I would support kelp research run by a science-based organization,” Davis added. “I feel this is really a business.”

In a nine-page letter to the county, the preservation group outlined their concerns, raising questions about the county’s expedited permitting process, the experimental nature of the project and the visual impacts it will have on the quiet cove: Eight lights on four-foot-tall buoys that will flash at six-second intervals, 72 buoys that will delineate the farm, and workers in large boats who will ply the waters several days a week during construction and maintenance periods.

“The scale troubles me,” said David Davidson, another resident. At 10 acres, “it will take up a significant portion of the cove, a cove that right now is very peaceful.”

Carey, with Sound Action, also raised concerns about Kollins’ proposal during the county’s comment period. In a six-page letter to the county, she questioned the county’s decision to use “an abbreviated” environmental review process rather than the fuller review allowed under the State Environmental Policy Act. The faster review process limited “meaningful public participation in what is currently an unprecedented type of development in Washington state,” she wrote.

The project would be far-reaching, she added — 435,000 square feet of marine habitat would be converted into an aquaculture site, potentially affecting a range of species, particularly Southern Resident killer whales, listed as endangered under the ESA; Kollins’ site, she noted, is within their critical habitat area, designated as part of a federally mandated recovery plan.

The 22 growing lines and 44 vertical anchor lines the project entails, she said, present “a significant risk of entanglement” to orcas traveling through the area, often chasing prey.

But the county, in its environmental review in support of the permit it issued last week, said Kollins’ project would neither harm the environment nor spoil the viewshed. The majority of the buoys would be low-profile and painted in muted colors, the report said, and the eight flashing buoys, required by the U.S. Coast Guard, would not add much light to what is already present — lights from homes on the Kitsap Peninsula, boat lights and antenna lights.

As for the entanglement issue, the county — citing various studies — said the risk to resident or transient whales is “low.” Whales do get entangled, injured and sometimes killed by lines, the county noted, but they’re caught in derelict fishing gear and crab pot lines, not by the taut lines used in aquaculture. “The risks of entanglement across these types of gear are so different as to not be comparable,” the county said.

“Searches of the scientific literature and outreach to NMFS (National Marine Fisheries Service) marine mammal experts,” the county’s report added, “failed to identify any known instance of Orca entanglements with aquaculture gear worldwide.”

The Fern Cove Preservation Alliance issued a statement Saturday in response to the county’s decision, noting that they were “disappointed and also surprised” that the county issued Kollins’ permit while the appeal on Spranger’s farm is pending. The alliance added: “We’ll be seeking input from the many concerned Fern Cove residents and considering our options, including an appeal.”

Pacific Sea Farms

The debate over entanglement is also front and center in Spranger’s farm on the southern end of the island. Though not the only issue raised, it was a significant point of contention during the eight-day hearing before the Shoreline Hearings Board.

His site is different from Kollins — it’s off-shore from a large bluff between Spring Beach and the Tahlequah Ferry Dock, where hardly a house can be seen. And unlike Kollins, Spranger hopes to grow only sugar kelp, all of it for commercial purposes; he’ll also include dangling cages for growing oysters and other shellfish.

But while his site is farther from humans, it will be located in one of the highest-use areas for whales in inland Puget Sound, according to Carey and others who testified during the hearing. Humpbacks are seen there year-round, and both transient and resident killer whales have been documented at the site for decades, they said.

David Bain, a cetacean scientist and vice president of the Orca Conservancy’s board, told the hearings board that “a single mortality” due to entanglement could jeopardize both the Southern Resident killer whales and the Central America humpbacks — the population that frequents Puget Sound — “because their populations have shrunk precipitously.”

What concerns Carey most, she said in a recent interview, is how little is known about aquaculture in Puget Sound, where the use of longline structures is new and largely untested. As a result, she said, she’s frustrated by those who point to the lack of any documented entanglements. “Of course there haven’t been — because this is so new in our region,” she said.

All told, she said, his site will add two to three miles of rope to Puget Sound. “And when rope goes in the water,” she said, “you have entanglement risk.”

Carey said she’s not opposed to kelp farming. In fact, after she learned about Spranger’s proposed farm, the two sat down and talked about it. They also know each other well — Carey helped him on a real estate matter several years ago and has occasionally borrowed his dog to help locate lost dogs as part of her pet-protection work, Spranger said.

But the issue has gotten tense over the course of the dispute. During the hearing, Spranger’s lawyer filed a motion to block Carey’s ability to testify as an expert witness in marine ecology — a motion the judge granted. Carey was allowed to continue to testify, but she no longer carried the clout of an expert. Sound Action’s lawyer, meanwhile, took aim at one of Spranger’s whale-related witnesses, islander Tag Gornall, noting he was primarily a small-animal vet whose only work with wild whales was as captive animals.

In an email, Spranger said he and his business partner, Gretchen Aro, are glad that Sound Action and others are asking questions.

“We are very process-oriented and this is a part of the process, and it allows for voices to be heard, information to be shared, and in the end, we believe it will make us and our farm more knowledgeable and respected,” he wrote.

At the same time, he said, he takes issue with Sound Action’s campaign against his farm, saying the organization’s statements are often confusing or inaccurate. One point of dispute: Carey says Spranger should use composite break-away lines, rather than rope, for his project to guard against whale entanglement. Spranger says that technology, while promising, is not yet commercially available.

“Frankly, it’s baffling, disingenuous, deceitful and frightening that a group is trying to raise funds by promoting a technology that doesn’t exist,” he said.

Carey, in response, called Spranger’s comment “a really unfortunate accusation that’s just not accurate.” Both fiberglass lines that can break and plastic rings that can be used to splice rope together and that break on impact exist, she said. “They’re in our hands right now.”

Spranger remains optimistic that his farm will eventually go forward. During a recent boat trip to his site, he talked about how he got hooked by the idea of kelp farming: He had recently retired from a career at a logistics firm, unsure what he was going to do next, when he heard an interview about kelp farming on NPR’s Freakonomics.

The idea was compelling, he said — the podcast explored the concept of regenerative marine farming, a kind of seaweed and shellfish farming that requires no fresh water, feed or fertilizer. Spranger, a diver with a keen interest in food production, felt he’d found his next calling. Now an unabashed enthusiast, he said he hopes kelp becomes “as ubiquitous as tofu.”

While bobbing in his boat near his site, he described safety measures his farm will use — the size of the anchors, for instance, that will lock his lines into place and an underwater drone he’ll employ to monitor his site. He’ll also use his diving skills to maintain his farm and ensure his lines remain taut. As a result, he said, he’s confident his farm will not only be whale-friendly but also people-friendly, providing healthy food in a way that actually improves marine health.

And while Carey says she’s losing sleep worrying about orcas, Spranger says just the opposite: “I firmly believe Sound Action has not proven anything they set out to prove, and I can go to sleep at night knowing I’m doing good.”

Carey, though, questions Spranger’s certainty. “Nothing is going to kill this industry faster than an entanglement,” she said.

Many islanders, meanwhile, are watching this dispute play out, pained by it in part because of the intensity of the debate and the people involved — high-profile islanders with good intentions. As Patrick Christie, an islander and a professor in the University of Washington’s School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, put it: “These are concerns between principled islanders.”

Christie, whose scholarship focuses on marine protected areas and Indigenous-led recovery in the Salish Seas, said he’s not surprised that the issue of kelp farming has triggered a strong response on Vashon. “We have this rapidly declining ecosystem that we love as well as the need for sustainably grown food.”

At the same time, he said, he would like to see community and government players support a mediated process, where “both the social and ecological impacts … as well as the perspectives of the people in conflict are taken seriously.”

“It would be unfortunate,” he added, “if the best we could do is try to win a lawsuit.”

— Leslie Brown is a former editor of The Beachcomber.