Welcome to Maryland's Aquaculture Siting Tool. This map was developed to help in locating prospective areas for aquaculture leases.

Maryland regulations prohibit aquaculture leases within 150 feet of:
1) A Public Shellfish Fishery Area,
2) A Harvest Reserve
3) A Federal Navigational Channel,
4) A Registered Pound Net Site and
5) Any Yates Bar that is located within an Oyster Sanctuary.

To assist users, this application shows the required 150 foot buffer around these features. Buffers are shown using a black hatch-style fill.

All waters lying within the confines of any marina are prohibited for the harvesting or storing of shellfish. Also waters adjacent to marina facilities in State shellfish waters and able to have ten or more vessels are restricted from harvesting or storing shellfish between May 1st and September 30th each year.

To toggle layers on or off, click on the Table of Contents tab and click the checkbox next to the corresponding layer. Checkboxes that are grayed out are not visible at the current map scale; zoom in to see them.

Click the dropdown arrow next to the pencil icon to access the measure and draw tools. The measure tool will measure the distance between two or more points on the map. The draw tool allows you to draw a polygon around a site you are interested in; when you finish drawing you may click on the polygon to obtain the corner coordinates and area. You may use this information when filling out your lease application.

Click the dropdown arrow next to the printer icon and select portrait or landscape to print the current view of the map. When the printer icon changes to say PRINTOUT, click that to be taken to the image (this can be very slow - be patient!). This printout is also helpful to submit along with your application.

This map works best when using Edge or Mozilla Firefox. If you are experiencing issues, try switching to one of those browsers and/or clearing browser cache.

This web application is for guidance only. Screening by the Department may find additional resource conflicts.

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