Oysters can also be grown off docks and individuals in waterfront property or have access to docks can participate in initiatives such as the Maryland Grows Oysters program.Partner(s): US Fish & Wildlife Service Texas Parks & Wildlife Department Eagle Point Oyster Reef Restoration - Galveston Bay, TX Want to contribute to oyster restoration yourself? Consider recycling oyster shells through programs such as the Oyster Recovery Partnership’s Shell Recycling Alliance and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Save Oyster Shells program so that they can be used at restoration sites. As of 2022, we are on course to meet our 2025 goal of restoring habitat in all ten tributaries. While oyster restoration is not new, creating reefs and re–seeding areas at this scale has never been done before. At the three-year mark, 98% of reefs met restoration standards and 1,740 acres of reef have been restored since the project started. The Chesapeake Bay Program has successfully restored oyster habitat in six tributaries, plus Virginia’s bonus tributary. To help lower costs of monitoring, a new approach is being developed called the Rapid Assessment Protocol which uses underwater cameras to monitor reefs. To monitor reefs, we use sonar, divers and patent tongs, which are hydraulic claws attached to boats that pick up oyster samples. Once the seeding is complete, reefs are monitored at the three-year and six-year marks to track if they meet the standards for a “restored reef.” A restored reef must meet a set of criteria that includes having a proper oyster density and reef size and height among other standards. (Photo by Will Parson/Chesapeake Bay Program) Monitoring and EvaluationĪ clump of oysters collected from Harris Creek Oyster Sanctuary on Maryland's Eastern Shore is held onboard the Callinectes, the research vessel of the Paynter Lab at the University of Maryland on Feb. As of 2021, 5.43 billion shells have been planted in the selected tributaries. Boats will take millions of spat-on-shell at a time and spray them onto the area with a reef to populate. The reef is created first and then spat-on-shell is added. If an area does not have a reef and has a low oyster reproduction rate, substrate and spat-on-shell juvenile oysters will be used. In Virginia, most areas only need substrate since they have higher oyster reproduction rates than Maryland. Substrate can be broken oyster shells, stone or crushed concrete. If an area does not have an existing reef but does have a natural population of oysters, substrate will be placed and existing oysters will populate the reef. This creates the spat-on-shell that is used to seed reefs. They create optimal conditions so oysters can spawn and then the free-swimming larvae attach to a shell. The University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science’s Horn Point Laboratory Oyster Hatchery produces most of the juvenile oysters used in restoration. If the area already has an existing reef, but does not have any living oysters on it, spat-on-shell juvenile oysters will be placed on the reef. Once a location has been chosen and a plan is in place, there are three ways reef restoration occurs. Creating a restoration blueprintīrian Hite sprays recycled oysters off the deck of the Poppa Francis and into the Tred Avon River Sanctuary for the Oyster Recovery Partnership near Oxford, Md., on July 18, 2022. In 2020, the eastern branch of the Elizabeth River was added as a sixth “bonus” tributary to be restored in Virginia. In Virginia, the five chosen were the Piankatank River, Lynnhaven River, Lower York and Great Wicomico. The five chosen in Maryland were Harris Creek, Little Choptank River, Tred Avon River, Upper St. In the end, 10 tributaries were selected (five in Maryland and five in Virginia) for restoration. Maryland and Virginia have maps detailing which areas are protected and which are approved shellfish harvesting locations. We also did not want to interfere with harvest areas as much as possible since the constructed reefs are considered sanctuaries and oysters living on them cannot be harvested. We looked for locations where oysters had historically been and had healthy water quality to sustain reefs. The first step to restoring oyster habitat was choosing what tributaries to focus on. (Photo by Steve Droter/Chesapeake Bay Program) A team from the NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office uses sonar to map the bottom of Harris Creek ahead of planned oyster restoration on Aug.
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