The reef of permits is real.We're charting it.
Permit Reef charts the clear, navigable route from idea to a working California shellfish or seaweed farm — leases, environmental review, food safety, spore sourcing, processing, distribution — one passage, marked stage by stage, with every figure labeled by how well it's verified. Fewer shoals, fewer surprises, no arguing over whose spreadsheet is right.
A private working desk, shared with the agencies reviewing the work. It charts the route. It never files anything on your behalf.
$0
fees Permit Reef collects from farmers — the working platform is privately stewarded
1
documented short route: a District-issued lease in Humboldt's pre-permitted footprint
11
agencies a new open-ocean farm typically touches before approval
0
shellfish- or seaweed-specific environmental review templates published by CA
The tracks
Six tracks, one passage.
A project doesn't move through California's process one agency at a time — it moves on several tracks at once. Each track carries its own status, its own open questions, and its own sources. Nothing here replaces an agency determination; it just keeps everyone looking at the same page.
Permits & Leasing
The full agency chain in order, from the Fish & Game Commission lease through annual CDFW registration — with fees, lead times, and pre-permitted lease footprints surfaced first.
Walk the chainEnvironmental Review
Scoping, CEQA lead-agency questions, and a working draft you can hand to a consultant instead of starting cold. Gaps are labeled, not guessed.
See the open gapsFood Safety & Harvest
CDPH shellfish sanitation, HACCP, and the still-unsettled ground on seaweed as a food — what's codified, what's guidance, what's genuinely open.
See what appliesSeed, Spore & Sourcing
Where hatchery seed and seaweed spore actually come from, what movement requires approval, and who to talk to before you plan a season around it.
Sourcing notesProcessing & Distribution
Entity structure, facility questions, wholesale realities, and cash-flow ranges — the part that decides whether a permitted farm ever sells anything.
See what appliesFunding Pipeline
Grants, cost-share, and restoration money mapped by fit and by when it's worth looking — inside the desk, kept current rather than invented.
Request a working seatA note from the deck
"I spent ten years trying to farm California seaweed and never got a lease in the water. The crop wasn't the hard part. The hard part was that no one had drawn the route through the reef of permits. So I started drawing it — first for my students, now for the growers still trying to get there."MARSH, J. — Former CEO, Kelpful, Inc.; Professor, Aquaculture, MiraCosta College and Santa Monica College; Founder, Brackish & Co. (current).