Probably more than 120 pple attended the community meeting on Texada: an amazing turnout. No polling, but I'd say 90+ percent not in favour of this proceeding on the beach and all the bay oceanscape of their local park. Two goverment rep's assistants there to take the mood.
The proponent had heard of the large negative reaction to the proposal so made a huge change and some impossible promises that caught me a little off guard until during when I was speaking and then unfortunately much later afterward:
- he decided to 'revise' his application by putting the whole 1/2 km x 1/2 km x 15m aquaculture assembly 15 meters below the surface of the water. No buoys on the surface - nothing! All boats - motor, kayak, sail, whatever are free to pass over the system with no impinging on their movement. And as a sop to the kayak enthusiasts [like, of course us ], an eco-kayaking business will be set up on top to facilitate the use of the area by kayakers etc.
Brilliant move by the proponent to some degree - introduce something new that has not been able to be scrutinized at all [or has been tried on a commercial scale anywhere - not mentioned] - but sure illuminates what an abominable unregulated application process we have for these industries: the original application seems to include any type of change that can be contemplated and all the process needs is a 'line item change'. Beyond belief. . .
However, because of the large change there just might be a re-opening of the comment ability and maybe one more meeting. . . . At which there likely will be a 'new' modification, I assume.
Anyway a great meeting with amazing turnout: standing room only, most everyone there was concerned. People said what I had to say made great sense [ie: a park is the wrong place] and that it was just a planning issue [my main thrust].
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However the system being proposed now seems to be a fair bit of BS: quite a few surface buoys ARE needed to 'support the 'submerged' system and of course the whole thing will have to marked by perimeter navigation buoys. Because this is a relatively new approach in N America, present research shows a whole host of approaches using literal surface support buoys at a many varying separations. Because it is new I do not believe that transport Canada has been involved in the setting of safety zones on or around these sytems because many high floation buoys are located 50' below the surface and if one lets go and you're swimming beside your SUP or rolling your kayak that = meat sandwich impact. I hope you're wearing your helmet and your pfd is thick.
As well, because many of these systems require something similar to neutral buoyancy, AND the anchor lines have to be set at 45deg downward angles, there is a huge amount of dyamic drift in storm conditions - hey Malaspina Strait ain't a calm place is it? But dynamic drift of a tension system in wave action means that downstream drift often happens right up to the surface. Anyway whatever the plan, there are certainly buoy issues that were told didn't exist by the proponent who has never done this before.
Here's a shot of a 2012 paper, but there are variations on the theme. This is in shallow water but shows the issues: possible storm action surface effect, horizontal displacement under tide/current forces and still buoys along every line - just that the bouys now get biiig:
Oh yeah, one of the papers mentions that this approach requires highly experienced operators with modern capable equipment [proponent is a novice at this] and that to be commercially viable about 120 lines would be require. So looking at the section drawing above, that would mean 'only' about 500 buoys in that pristine bay - I'd say any variation that theme is not quite what is appropriate here.
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Anyway back to the meeting: I surmised while speaking that the 'eco kayak' business is probably going to be on rafts
because it would be impossible to have a neutrally buoyant system and that the rafts were actually part of the structural requirements to hold it all at a single gradiant as everything got heavier and heavier as the shellfish grew. And I also noted that navigation buoys and markers and radar reflectors would be require so that the surface would have some evidence that something was below. But those comments were like dancing backwards on uncertain ground.
So good support, amazing turnout and obvious interest, the proponent had lots of time [it was a chamber of commerce type meeting] and I think the basic bad planning issue of this was heard to a decent degree.
Now we'll wait and see what happens more, but I think this is just the beginning of what the group of opposed residents and we others will be able to bring to this. This meeting was set up at extremely short notice and everyone became ready and determined to make their points known, and to have such an expression of concern by the turnout - impressive.
Like pointed out before, this is already used as a site by us kayakers as well as others and by all rights it should stay as it is, so putting in a little bit of intensive effort will all be worth it if it all comes to pass.
And another totally unlooked for possibility came to light: it may be possible to get other amazing campsite possibilities in some unbelievably picturesque parts of that island. Completely unexpected.
Anyway, met some good solid people who care about the beauty of their/our coastlines and will put themselves out in order that rational decisions might be made. Nothing necessarily against aquaculture, but just poor planning decisions that might put an industry in the middle of a park so that use by a lot of users gets destroyed by one.
