May 1, 2025
Over a few days this winter, aspiring leaders and supervisors of farmhands, plant workers, and nursery staff from shellfish companies up and down the West Coast found themselves back in the classroom – well, at least part of the time. The rest of the time they practiced hands-on first aid, ran through interpersonal work scenarios, and learned proper ergonomics to help prevent injuries on the job.
They were attending Tide’s Out, Washington Sea Grant’s (WSG) new training series focused on the shellfish industry. Created in response to a needs assessment WSG and Oregon Sea Grant conducted back in 2021, the training aims to meet an industry desire for more professional development for its workers – in particular, around building soft skills.
Tide’s Out launched in 2024 with four mandatory sessions that built on one another. But that structure, holding the classes in two different locations, and trying to plan around the tides all posed challenges. With lessons learned, Tide’s Out co-creator and WSG social science and education specialist Nicole Naar worked with industry advisors like Pacific Seafood shellfish manager Kyle Deerkop to shape and improve this year’s offering. The result was a new, more “a la carte” series of sessions that attendees could choose themselves, all providing, as Naar put it, “less content and more context.”
Growing oysters in Willapa Bay. Photo courtesy of Nicole Naar.
“That’s sort of at the heart of a lot of the changes we made,” Naar explains. “Asking, how is this maximally useful to the folks that we serve?”
This year’s training focused more on managers or those with decision-making power in a shellfish company. The idea was to help workers at different levels and in different parts of a company better understand and connect to one another. Some sessions, for example, offered resources to help managers who don’t speak Spanish connect with Spanish-speaking employees. Others covered housing shortages for shellfish industry workers, shared characteristics of younger workers entering the industry, and highlighted ways companies can work with local economic development councils to ensure industry needs are being planned for. These topics may not be commonly found in professional development courses, but well suit the needs of Washington’s shellfish industry, based mostly in rural coastal communities.
Another appeal of the training, according to Deerkop, was the variety of workers actually in attendance. “I’ve had people who’ve worked for me for over 30 years in these classes, and people who’ve worked with me for less than a month in these classes, and they all took something from it,” Deerkop says.
With new tools and strategies gained not only from the formal lessons, but also from sharing and brainstorming with one another, managers and other employees can more easily see different perspectives, give and receive feedback, and resolve conflict. And improving leadership skills throughout a company can be a positive way to help it grow.
As Washington’s shellfish industry continues to change, Tide’s Out will evolve too. Both Naar and Deerkop mentioned the possibility of combining aquaculture and fishing-specific trainings into one offering, given the overlap between the two industries in the state. They also mention an emphasis on longevity and community when thinking about how Tide’s Out can serve these industries going forward. Naar, in particular, notes that she would love to see managers who have completed the training come back to share their knowledge with managers taking it for the first time.
“These training opportunities can make you more connected to your co-workers, or they may also connect you to other opportunities in your company or to your community,” Naar says. “It’s nice to tease out those connections and get folks more invested in where they work and where they live.”
“There really hasn’t been a place where people in the industry can go to learn new skills and grow their career,” says Deerkop. “This is brand new, and there’s a lot of opportunity to continue to develop it and make it even better for all of us in the industry.”
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Washington Sea Grant, based at the University of Washington, helps people and marine life thrive through research, technical expertise and education supporting the responsible use and conservation of coastal ecosystems. Washington Sea Grant is one of 34 Sea Grant programs supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in coastal and Great Lakes states that encourage the wise stewardship of our marine resources through research, education, outreach and technology transfer.
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MAY
2025