I spent a day volunteering with the Brevard Zoo and University of Central Florida on their Oyster Reef Restoration Project. We met at Mosquito Lagoon which is at the north end of Cape Canaveral National Park. We went by boat out into the lagoon where we waded onto the reef.
The reef was originally a natural oyster bed. It has been damaged largelet by the wakes from boats which use the area for recreation. The wakes knock the oysters off the reef and gradually break it down.
Baby oysters prefer to attach to other oyster shells. This is why when you look at an oyster shell there is often other oysters attached to it. The idea of the artificial reef is to lay down mats of oyster shells to encourage new oysters to attach on them and grow a new reef.
During the year there are volunteer days where people make the mats. I went to one of these sessions. You take a plastic grid and use zip ties to tie the oysters all over the mat. At the lagoon we raked the lagoon bed to make it flat. We then laid out the mats into a grid. We used concrete donut shaped weights to connect them all at the corners.
It is important to restore the oyster reefs for the following reasons:
- They are a key stone species. That means if they became extinct the rest of that ecosystem would also cease to exist.
- Each oyster filters about 2 gallons of water per hour
- Reefs are home to about 150 species of marine life
- They are a source of food for other animals
- They help prevent corrosion of the shores.
