[Problem]
California's shellfish and seaweed growers face a permitting reef spread across agencies, with no shared chart for leases, seed, environmental review, food safety, harvest, and market requirements.
[Approach]
- 01Built a public chart with a Permit Tracker, Known Gaps, Barriers & Solutions, and supporting waters, resources, and industry views. Every figure is labeled as real data, a template, a proposal, or user input.
- 02Paired it with a private, invite-only working desk where agencies and operators can follow the same stages and tracks, surface red flags, and keep draft work clearly separate from policy or a formal filing.
- 03Added a legislative drafting workspace for the proposed California Aquaculture Permitting Reform Act, with section-by-section review and visible source material rather than a polished claim that the work is finished.
[Outcome]
A working public map of California's shellfish and seaweed permitting path, paired with a private drafting desk and an active permitting-reform bill draft. The policy work remains proposed and under review.
[Background]
California's seaweed farming industry is still finding its footing — a patchwork of permits, food-safety thresholds, seed standards, and environmental reviews spread across agencies that have never shared one chart. Permit Reef is the flagship working platform where the team, agency staff, and industry reviewers chart the path together, across every part of the industry.
It is private and invite-only — an internal working draft, not agency policy. Inside, the work is organized into industry-familiar tracks: Permits & Licenses, Food Safety, Spore Sourcing, Processing & Distribution, and Environmental Review. Each track is a Chart Desk a team can own — its own gaps, evidence, ideas, decisions, and tasks — while leads see the whole reef rolled up and keep everything moving.
Kelp Compass and Spore Bank stay live as their own public, Sea Grant–led projects; their work feeds the Food Safety and Spore Sourcing tracks. The tone is warm and built for social license: agencies are partners charting alongside, never a maze to defeat. From idea to table, every fact carries a source, every gap stays a gap, and every export carries a draft banner so a screenshot can never be mistaken for policy.
