Along the Maryland coast the Assateague Coastal Trust has been restoring oyster habitat in the shallow waters behind the state's barrier Islands. Oysters have been gone from Maryland's waters for 50 years. "We build oyster beds by transferring clean substrate into the St. Martin River, a tributary of Sinepuxent Bay," said Ron Piling, president of the Trust.
Once a substrate is established they turn to about 50 volunteer "oyster gardeners" who grow oysters on "floats" at home for introduction onto the new beds. "On one or two days during the summer gardeners bring the oysters to waiting boats where Boy Scouts and other volunteers haul them out to the beds," said Piling, explaining that creating the new beds was a great way to improve water quality and establish habitat for small pinfish, blue crabs and even sea squirts and periwinkles. "One of the first indicators that we were doing well," said Piling," "was that even though it's not a big sportfishing area, two or three months after creating the first bed we started to see people anchored over the beds and fishing for summer flounder and croaker. The second indicator was the discovery of successful spatfall, meaning we had oyster reproduction."
In North Carolina, FAF has partnered with the North Carolina Coastal Federation to promote a number of "living shoreline initiatives," explained executive director Todd Miller. A program in Bogue Sound, for instance, involves removing bulkheads, creating a berm with limestone fill, and then planting marsh grass behind the berm. Volunteers from local schools and Duke University assist in planting the grass. The group's goal is to demonstrate to waterfront property owners that there is an environmentally friendly alternative to stop coastal erosion. "These fringing salt marshes are the most productive fish habitat we have anywhere in the world. They are critical habitat for everything, including red drum, speckled trout and flounder," said Miller.
FAF is also supporting a number of important projects in Florida, including a major mangrove tree planting effort in Indian River Lagoon where members of the Orlando Chapter of Coastal Conservation Association, along with a steady contingent of volunteers from local clubs and high schools, have planted more than 27,000 mangroves so far. "Every mangrove tree supports more than 10,000 fish in its lifetime," explained Mark Carter, habitat coordinator for the chapter. That doesn't mean all those fish eat mangrove leaves, it means that the mangroves initiate a food chain that begins with small organisms eating the falling leaves. "Even accounting for a 30 percent survival rate, that's something like 80 million fish these volunteers have helped," said Carter.
In Tampa Bay on Florida's west coast, FAF contributes to an organization called Tampa BayWatch, which has been actively restoring habitat in the greater Tampa Bay ecosystem for many years. With a large following of volunteers, they hold heavily attended marsh plantings and create oyster bars throughout the huge Tampa bay ecosystem. To date they've restored hundreds of acres of marsh grass and built 30 new oyster bars with 59 tons of oyster shells. Volunteers plant grass and shovel and haul oyster shells to the new bar sites.
In the western Florida Panhandle, FAF is helping with the marsh grass portion of a major project to create oyster reef and marsh habitats in Pensacola Bay. With barge loads of Kentucky limestone they are building the reefs along the shoreline and then planting emergent grasses behind it. Oysters settle on the reef and begin cleaning the water, and the buffer zone acts to collect and clean runoff while nourishing the bay's fisheries.
"Early indicators of success are the amount of blue crabs, stone crabs, flounder and gray snapper seen in the new habitats," said Sava Varazo, environmental manager and supervisor of the restoration section of the local office of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. "There's also thousands upon thousands of spat (baby oysters) settling on the rocks."
The project participants also "take 2,500 to 3,000 middle school students out by boat each year to educate them about the environment and the purpose of the habitat," said Varazo.
