State officials issued their first aquatic lease for a commercial kelp farm in Washington on Friday, an encouraging sign to two Vashon-based companies working to launch separate kelp operations in Colvos Passage.

Both Mike Kollins, owner of Vashon Kelp Forest, and Mike Spranger, owner of Pacific Sea Farms, said the four-year lease issued to Lummi Island SeaGreens in Whatcom County will likely serve as a model for other kelp growers eager to begin aquaculture projects in the state’s publicly owned waters.

Spranger and Gretchen Aro, co-owners of Pacific Sea Farms, who have secured county and federal permitting to begin growing kelp, said they’re ready to place equipment in the water as soon as they receive a lease from the state. Spranger called the lease — issued by the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) — “a fabulous milestone.”

“We’re encouraged. We hope DNR will issue our lease in time for us to plant this season,” Spranger said.

But both farms continue to face opposition from islanders who have voiced a range of concerns — including potential harm to orca and humpback whales who frequent the waters around Vashon and the aesthetics of growing operations that will lead to increased boat traffic and require 24-7 lighting in areas that are currently quiet and largely dark at night.

In September, Sound Action, an advocacy group helmed by islander Amy Carey, appealed a decision by the state Shoreline Hearings Board that upheld King County’s approval of a development permit to Pacific Sea Farms. That appeal, which cites concerns about potential whale entanglement in the long lines used by kelp farming and several other environmental issues, is now pending in King County Superior Court.

Spranger says he can move forward with his project once he gets an aquatic lease from the state — even with a pending legal challenge — because Sound Action did not seek an injunction. Carey, however, questioned Spranger’s assertion, noting that a lease could also be appealed.

Should they get the green light, Spranger and Aro plan to grow sugar kelp and shellfish, including mussels, clams and oysters, on 6.6 acres beneath a forested bluff west of the Tahlequah ferry dock.

Kollins’ 10-acre kelp farm would be situated about 1200 to 1800 feet offshore near Fern Cove on the northwest side of the island. He says he plans to harvest about 30 percent of the kelp he grows; the rest, he says, will stay on the line for scientists to study whether farmed bull kelp can help regenerate wild bull kelp, a native sea algae that is critical to the Puget Sound ecosystem and that has experienced dramatic declines over the years.

King County awarded Kollins a Shoreline Substantial Development Permit in August, a decision that was quickly appealed to the state Shoreline Hearings Board by the Fern Cove Preservation Alliance, a group of residents concerned about the impact a kelp farm could have on the quiet cove and the nature preserve that surrounds it.

The multi-day hearing is scheduled to begin Dec. 11 with a visit by members of the hearings board to Fern Cove, an unusual move, according to the preservation alliance.

Mary Bruno, one of the leaders of the preservation alliance, said she’s deeply encouraged by the board’s decision to visit the site. The group’s appeal focuses hugely on the aesthetic impact Kollins’ farm could have on Fern Cove, a place that Bruno and others call tranquil and pristine and that was protected years ago in large part because of its stunning natural beauty. The Fern Cove Preserve is owned by the Vashon Park District.

“Our attorney will show them around and give them a sense of the cove itself,” Bruno said. “I love that they agreed to do that. … They’ll have a better sense of what’s at stake.”

Kollins said he, too, is pleased the board will do a site visit. “I could not be happier that they’re coming, for them to see what it is and what it is not and to see the area and understand it better.”

According to a pre-hearing order issued by the board, the hearing will focus on whether King County violated state law in several areas, including its obligation to consider the recreational and visual impacts of an aquaculture project at Fern Cove, the project’s cumulative and ecological impacts, and its impact on the shoreline’s natural character. The hearing will also consider whether the county should have explored an alternative site or a smaller project.

In a website the group recently launched — ferncovealliance.org — the group also takes issue with the county’s decision to fast-track its approval of Kollins’ project, “foregoing public hearings, an Environmental Impact Statement, and any monitoring or assessment of potential impacts, positive or negative, on endangered orcas, migrating shorebirds and waterfowl, boaters, visitors, and the Cove’s 75-plus homeowners.”

Kollins said the legal challenge — focused largely on the county’s administrative process, he noted — slows his effort, but he feels confident his farm will get permitted. “We’re just in a waiting game,” he said.

A spokesman for DNR, meanwhile, said the department has two other pending commercial leases for kelp farming, the first such leases in the state. Besides the lease just issued to the Lummi Island farm, Blue Dot Sea Farms in north Hood Canal and Spranger and Aro’s Pacific Sea Farms have applied for leases. Kollins can’t seek a lease until he receives permitting from the Army Corps of Engineers. Both Lummi Island SeaGreens and Blue Dot are already operational — but they’ve been working under research leases, not commercial ones.

Joe Smillie, a DNR spokesman, said the department sees these leases as test cases and that it’s proceeding carefully as a result. “It’s uncharted water.”

He said the department has been in consultation with the state of Alaska, where commercial kelp farming is already taking place, as well as other state and federal agencies. “There’s a global bank of research that we’ve been tapping into.”

Most aquatic leases are 12 years; the one just issued to the Lummi operation is a four-year lease that can be renewed two times. The company will pay $5,255 a year for the lease.

In drafting aquatic leases for kelp growing, Smillie said the state is looking closely at the issue of whale entanglement, the impact of kelp farming on aquatic vegetation on the seafloor, and other ecological issues. But Carey, with Sound Action, said she was troubled by the state’s first kelp lease, a 47-page document that makes no mention of whale entanglement or other ecological issues.

“The bottom line is that there are no tangible whale or marine mammal entanglement protections, which is confounding and something we and other partner organizations will continue to discuss with DNR,” Carey said.

Leslie Brown is a former editor of The Beachcomber.