The city’s six-month ban on new commercial aquaculture activities will give Bainbridge Island time to make a “limited amendment” to the new aquaculture rules in its updated Shoreline Master Program, officials said this week.

The Bainbridge Island City Council unanimously adopted an emergency six-month moratorium at its meeting Tuesday on new aquaculture projects. The ban is aimed at projects that would require a substantial shoreline development permit and conditional use permits.

The move was needed, according to the city, to preserve the “status quo” and stop new applications for commercial aquaculture projects while the city has a chance to amend its new aquaculture regulations.

Bainbridge adopted its revised Shoreline Master Program, or SMP, in July 2014 after a herculean effort that spanned more than four years. The rewrite of the program — which restricts development on state shorelines to protect wildlife and habitat and public access to the shore — includes new rules that cover aquaculture as well as commercial and residential development along the coast.

The update to the SMP was highly controversial.

Opponents of the SMP, many of them shoreline property owners, claimed the new regulations were too complex, too confusing, unconstitutional and infringed on property rights. Some shoreline property owners said the new regulations would hurt their property values and make it necessary for them to get permits to garden or trim trees on their land — claims the city denied.

Other islanders, however, countered that the update was watered down in deference to coastal landowners and other interests.

Two groups filed legal challenges against the SMP in October with the Central Puget Sound Growth Management Hearings Board.

A coalition of environmental organizations — Bainbridge Alliance for Puget Sound, Association of Bainbridge Communities and Coalition to Protect Puget Sound Habitat — said the city’s updated rules would open up the entire shoreline of Bainbridge to aquaculture.

The groups accused the Department of Ecology of “overreach” with its changes to Bainbridge’s update, and said the state agency “greatly weakened” the city’s proposed regulations on commercial aquaculture and “stripped away” most of the protections that had been put into the SMP update as it was rewritten. The group said the changes would allow commercial aquaculture on 95 percent of the island’s 53 miles of shoreline, including in some of the most protected areas.

A group of property owners called Preserve Responsible Shoreline Management, led by Richard “Dick” Haugan, also filed a challenge to the plan.

The hearings board earlier declined to consolidate the two cases, and decisions on both are expected in early April.

Bainbridge, along with Ecology and the Alliance, asked the hearings board to extend the schedule for the Bainbridge Alliance petition against the city’s new SMP earlier this month so the parties work toward a settlement agreement.

The settlement agreement would include a limited amendment to the SMP with changes to the new rules that were supported by all three sides; the environmental groups, the city and Ecology.

The city council plans to have a public hearing on the moratorium ordinance within the next 60 days.