Interviews with growers in Oregon and California show that complex permitting processes often hinder rapid adaptation to ocean stressors like acidification, hypoxia, and marine heat waves
By Colin Bowyer, Communications Manager, February 26, 2026
Kristen Green
Aquaculture is a growing source of food production worldwide, including along the Oregon and California coasts. Despite recent increases in production and the growing global importance of aquaculture products for food security and livelihoods, yield is projected to decline under stressors from climate change, such as ocean acidification, hypoxia, marine heat waves, algal blooms, and more.
In addition to environmental stressors, shellfish-reliant communities also face troubling socioeconomic concerns, such as labor shortages, supply chain challenges, and a complex regulatory environment. Such obstacles can limit the expansion of future aquaculture operations, as well as the ability of aquaculture growers to respond to stressors.
A new qualitative study published in Ecology & Society reveals how shellfish farmers in California and Oregon are adapting to and coping with a fast‑changing climatic and socioeconomic environment, including what helps them stay resilient in the face of growing challenges.
Researchers from the School of Public Policy and College of Earth, Oceanic, and Atmospheric Sciences, along with the University of Washington, San Diego State University, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, and the California Marine Sanctuary, interviewed nine out of 17 farmers in California and 13 out of 19 in Oregon. Most of the shellfish growers principally cultivated oysters (Pacific, Kumamoto, and Olympia), in addition to mussels, Manila clams, and abalone.
Lead author Kristen Green, a former postdoctoral fellow in the School of Public Policy and now a researcher at the University of Washington, led the interview process throughout 2020 to 2022.
“Bivalve farm owners and managers along the U.S. West Coast, particularly in California and Oregon, where they tend to be smaller-scale operations, face unique pressures at both a chronic and acute scale,” said Green. “They’re aware of what climate effects like ocean acidification and hypoxia can do to their production, as seen by the Oregon shellfish hatchery larval crash in the late 2000s, but pressures can overlap and build on each other. Understanding how and when to prioritize adaptation response strategies to these stressors is paramount.”
Lauren Rice
Among all the stressors identified, regulatory hurdles were the most disruptive, causing costly delays and financial strain for farms in both California and Oregon. Growers reported that navigating complex rules often slows down their ability to respond to urgent environmental problems or invest in improvements. Adapting to the oftentimes onerous regulatory and permitting process has led to creative problem-solving by growers. For example, some growers have transitioned from retail sales to wholesale to avoid certain state regulations, found business partners through local networks, and been bolstered by assets like natural capital. Other growers relied on peer knowledge-sharing networks about more effective ways of designing and using suspended gear in response to stress caused by nuisance and invasive species, as well as the best way to obtain permits.
“Certainly working in fisheries you hear growers talk about regulatory complaints,” said Green. “But it was surprising to hear a common complaint from both growers in California and Oregon was that regulations and permitting were often the most challenging aspects of running a farm. In the future, particularly as environmental stressors become more prominent, farmers will need to be more nimble, but ideally the regulatory processes will also be flexible enough to accommodate these changes.”
“Interviewees described regulatory stress as a compounding issue,” added research assistant Lauren Rice, ‘23, M.S. ‘25. “Some permitting and regulatory processes are pervasively restrictive, and these stressors are often much more tangible and apparent in growers’ daily operations. Because permitting and regulatory processes can also get in the way of responding to environmental changes and invasive species, the impacts compound, making this root stressor all the more pressing.”
Following regulations, ocean acidification and hypoxia remain major environmental concerns for growers. Consistent with current oceanographic trends, these conditions can result in acute mortality events and production losses, underscoring the sensitivity of bivalve aquaculture to dynamic ocean upwelling. Some farmers were able to adapt when ocean acidification and hypoxia were detected through water monitoring, often in collaboration with external scientists. Support for these strategies, particularly the technology for water monitoring and the skills to interpret the results, can advance adaptation, which will be essential with increasing climate change impacts.
“Growers try to be as attuned to ocean dynamics as much as possible,” said co-author Erika Allen Wolters, associate professor at the School of Public Policy. “There is high awareness of ocean acidification and hypoxia amongst those in the industry because of previous low-oxygen events. Few individual farms have the technology to constantly monitor water quality and marine heatwaves are hard to forecast, so building strong networks amongst growers increases knowledge-sharing and adaptiveness.”
Erika Allen Wolters
Other stressors that growers identified outside of regulatory and environmental conditions were lingering supply chain disruptions from the initial years of the COVID-19 Pandemic and rising operating costs, like fuel, gear, and labor.
Of all the identified stressors, growers successfully executed an adaptive response for a majority of cases, while cope responses accounted for over a third of and react responses for just over 10 percent. This distribution highlights that although adaptive strategies are common, substantial portions of grower responses remain constrained to short‑term coping or reactive measures, indicating limitations in structural or resource‑based adaptive capacity.
Adaptation was most successful when farmers could draw on certain strengths, including flexibility, learning new skills, support networks, and having the agency to make decisions independently. Governance‑related support, such as permitting and regulatory systems, were least reported by growers to aid in adaptation, suggesting a gap between policy structures and on‑the‑ground needs. Shellfish growers will often combine multiple forms of knowledge and resources to solve problems. For example, a grower’s ability to take initiative, or agency, was most effective when paired with resources such as equipment investments, collaboration with others, or flexible farm practices.
“It’s important to look at adaptive strategies in combination,” explained Green. “What are the recipes that people need to follow to better adapt to stressors and how do growers adjust the ingredients in order to continue to adapt? Oftentimes, we assume adaptation requires money, when that’s not necessarily the case. Growers have shown a lot of different ways of adapting and the important thing is having access to these adaptive capacities and combining them when needed.”
Shellfish aquaculture is a vital part of coastal food systems. As climate change and regulatory landscapes continue to shift, understanding how growers adapt can help policymakers, researchers, and communities better support sustainable seafood production.