Members of Shellfish Gardeners of North Carolina, a newly formed organization of people who raise shellfish as a hobby, asked the Marine Fisheries Commission this week for permission to start growing native oysters through this process by June 15. But commission Chairman Jimmy Johnson said the issue is complicated and he could not promise to meet that timeline.

“There’s no way that I will allow this commission to rush into something of this magnitude,” Johnson said before asking the Shellfish Advisory Committee to look at the issue at its May 6 meeting in Morehead City.

The group is also up against opposition from Division of Marine Fisheries Director Preston Pate, who said what they essentially want is proprietary use of the water column beneath piers. That would change the state’s tenor of permitting riparian access, Pate said.

“There are some very serious legal and public trust issues at stake,” Pate said. “It would affect thousands and thousands of people.”

Shellfish Gardeners proposes growing oysters from legally obtained North Carolina spat now being cultivated in the lab by N.C. Sea Grant.

“Shellfish in North Carolina are a scarce and vanishing resource,” said John Alison of Oriental.

Shellfish gardening is a cost-effective way for people to grow their own oysters and help the environment, Alison said. Not only would the oysters filter pollutants to help water quality, they would spawn, adding to the wild oyster population, and the growers would recycle the shell.

To do this, though, the growers would need permission to possess undersized shellfish. And they also would want some legal right to the oysters in the cages, Alison said.

Darrell Wiard, a former attorney from Oriental, said that in reviewing state statutes and commission rules, he saw no reason why a shellfish gardening permit could not be set up under the division’s authority to permit aquaculture operations.

Pate, however, said the division has no authority to issue permits to aquaculture operations without a shellfish lease. Even if it did, he added, the division does not have the staff to handle what could become a burdensome workload, given the thousands of private piers in the state.

The Shellfish Gardeners suggested that a computer application would cut that workload, which Pate said would not suffice.

Members of the Shellfish Gardeners questioned why an oyster cage hanging from a dock is any more a trespass on public trust waters than a crab pot, which is allowed by law.

Mike Marshall, head of the division’s Fisheries Management section, said the difference is in state statutes.

“Practically, there’s not a lot of difference, but under state law shellfish culturing is just more rigidly controlled,” Marshall said.