Mystery Bay: The Case of the Disappearing Coliforms
Out on Mystery Bay, the nautical small talk usually revolves around winds and waves and tidal currents – the crucial factors to spending a day on Puget Sound.
These days, a new topic has been added to the mix – fecal coliforms. And these microscopic bacteria, usually associated with four-letter words, could become the most significant maritime variable of all.
Mystery Bay is the pastoral cove on Marrowstone Island, tucked deep in Kilisut Harbor. It has to be one of the lovelier bays in the area, surrounded by treed shores and broad oyster beds. In recent years, it’s also become a popular, year-round anchorage, home to dozens of pleasure craft whose owners have fled the rising moorage rates in Port Townsend.
And thereby hangs our tale. State officials who regularly test the water quality in Mystery Bay and other shellfish areas recently downgraded the bay from “approved” to “conditionally approved” for shellfish.
What this means is that the Department of Health is concerned that the number of boats will cause an increase in fecal coliform counts around the bay. And this, in turn, could affect the shellfish, including the family-owned Marrowstone Island Shellfish Co, which owns and leases tidelands in the area.
Boatowners are worried. Most keep their boats attached to buoys which may or may not have up-to-date state and county permits, on tidelands managed by the state Department of Natural Resources. If they get kicked out, it’s not at all clear where else they could go.
“This is ridiculous,’ grumbles one boat-owner who does not want to be identified, and who keeps his sailboat on a Mystery Bay buoy. “ I don’t know of anybody who is dumping their waste into the bay. This isn’t a problem.”
He’s right. State health reports make it clear that there is no fecal coliform problem in Mystery Bay. The state regularly tests the water at five stations in the bay and the results range from 1.7 to 33 bacteria per 100 mililiters. The average count is just two critters per 100 ml -- well below the state imposed limit. It is as good or better than test results from Port Townsend Bay, or even from the famous oyster beds down in Quilcene Bay.
All five stations in Mystery Bay meet the state standard, and the station considered most suspect – Mystery Bay State Park – was among the cleanest.
So what’s the beef?
“It’s not about fecal coliforms,” says Al Scalf, of Jefferson County Community Development. “It’s about too many boats.”
State officials acknowledged this. Any place where ten or more boats are gathered together must be considered a “marina.” When I checked last week, there were about 45 boats of every size and shape scattered across Mystery Bay, and many of them near the dock at the state park, the area that state officials are watching closely.
The conditional approval is based on “the potential for discharge from vessels,” according to Scott Berbells of the state Department of Health. If people start dumping their waste, the bacteria could begin to accumulate in local shellfish, with dire consequences.
But people don’t dump their sewage in the bay, my friend insists. If they use their onboard head, they discharge the sewage at a pumpout station at the park. No problemo.
Still, the flap become the subject of a meeting involving four different government agencies, shellfish growers and local Native American tribes who have shellfish rights. “We’re trying to come up with a plan,” says Scalf.
State officials reiterated their concern that all those boats could create a pollution problem. OK, but so far they haven’t, local officials argued. And evicting the boats would create major problems in a region where boat moorage is scarce and expensive. Kick them out of Mystery Bay, and some of these boatowners might find something new. But why put them through all that if there is no problem?
Mystery Bay’s little predicament appears to be much ado about nothing. But it is symptomatic of the broader challenge of restoring and protecting Puget Sound. Virtually everybody here understands that our inland sea is in trouble, and most are willing to spend whatever is necessary to fix it.
But what exactly is the problem, and what can we do about it? I’ve been writing about these things for three decades, and every few years the conventional wisdom changes. At one time or another, it has been a problem of overfishing, or of suburban sprawl, or of urban sewage, or industrial wastes, or rural septic tanks, or of too much asphalt, or not enough eelgrass. It’s probably safe to say it’s all of the above, but that doesn’t help shape a smart set of solutions.
In September, we’ll start over when the new Puget Sound Partnership issues its recommendations for a new strategy. Who knows what they’ll ask for?
But here’s some free advice. If you want to preserve Puget Sound, start by NOT wasting time and energy attacking water quality problems that don’t exist.
