The whole chart
From first tide chart to working farm.
Permitting is one reef in a much longer passage. A successful California shellfish or seaweed operation also needs safe food, lawful seed, workable processing, enough runway, and a buyer at the far dock. Permit Reef keeps those lanes on one chart.
The Passage
Ten stages. No mystery shoals.
The order bends by species, location, and business model. The work does not disappear.
- 01
Shape the operation
Species, gear, scale, entity, business model, and a real first-pass budget.
Find your route - 02
Choose waters with care
Compare siting paths, constraints, Tribal co-stewardship, and the Humboldt Bay District lease route.
Whose waters these are - 03
Build the evidence file
Separate verified facts from templates, proposals, assumptions, and operator inputs.
See what's unverified - 04
Navigate review
Lease, CEQA, Coastal, water quality, federal permits, consultation, and annual registration.
Open the chain of review - 05
Make food safely
Harvest controls, sanitation pathway, HACCP needs, testing, traceability, and labeling.
Where the food rules stop - 06
Source and grow
Seed or spore sourcing, biosecurity, gear deployment, monitoring, harvest, and restoration fit.
Source documents - 07
Process and pack
Facility needs, handling controls, cold chain, packaging, records, and buyer specifications.
Barriers & fixes - 08
Finance the crossing
Capital stack, grants, match, reimbursement timing, debt, insurance, and operating runway.
What the path costs - 09
Reach the buyer
Distribution, logistics, wholesale readiness, market fit, and verified product claims.
Barriers & fixes - 10
Operate and keep watch
Renewals, reporting, compliance calendar, evidence updates, incidents, and adaptive management.
See the clocks
Where this could live
The chart doesn't have to live on our website.
Permit Reef is a hosted working desk today. It does not have to stay one. The same charts, checklists, and clocks can be packaged so an agency runs them inside its own systems — its data, its servers, its control, with only the syncs it approves.
- 01
Localized data package
The same platform, scoped to one agency or one region — its waters, its permits, its clocks, its contacts. Nothing outside that jurisdiction clutters the view.
- HostingOurs
- Agency dataKept separate and scoped
- Stand-upWeeks, not quarters
Best for a pilot. Fastest way to see the chart working before anything is procured.
- 02
Their own instance
A separate copy of the platform under the agency's name and branding, with its own accounts and its own records. Improvements we make can be pushed to it on the agency's schedule.
- HostingTheir choice
- BrandingTheirs
- UpdatesOnly when they accept them
Requires a named owner inside the agency. Without one, updates stall and the copy drifts.
- 03
Software inside their systems
No public website at all. The tool is installed behind the agency's firewall, running against the agency's own database, reachable only by agency staff. Records never leave.
- HostingAgency infrastructure
- Custody of dataEntirely theirs
- Outside syncsOnly ones they approve
Strongest answer to "where does our data go?" — and the longest to stand up, since IT review adds months.
Plainly
No hosted public site an agency has to answer for. No outside custody of agency records. No dependence on us to keep the lights on. We stay the mapmakers and the maintenance crew — the agency holds the keys.