If You Build It, They Will Come
Oysters Returning to the Bay
By Olivia Owre-Bell
This year, The Watershed Project successfully launched our Oysters on the Half Shell program. The goal of Oysters on the Half Shell is to bring community groups together to protect and restore native oyster populations in San Francisco Bay. Through classroom presentations, field trips, and public restoration work days, volunteers of all ages have taken part in protecting an important Bay Area species.
Our program's hands-on approach to restoration education extends beyond general understanding of marine systems. By physically engaging people with their wetland environments, they have an opportunity to experience the connection between humans and oceans first-hand. For instance, restoration of oyster reefs can help marine populations of salmon, herring and oysters, which is in turn a boon to our own seafood-loving human communities.
The backbone of our education program is basic ecosystem science. Students from schools around the Bay are learning about oceanic diversity by studying the zonation of ecosystems in the Bay's intertidal and subtidal habitats. While we explore many of the typically unnoticed creatures living in these regions, our main focus is the native oyster's life cycle, biology, and importance as a keystone species.
By studying the oyster reef ecosystems, students gain an understanding of the interconnectedness of many different species of plants and animals in the Bay. During field trips, students have the chance to work directly with scientists to monitor oyster populations by counting and recording oyster spats.
Our volunteer work days consistently attract a variety of tenacious members of the community to help with oyster restoration efforts. Volunteers build reefs, count spats, climb rip-rap, and trudge through low tides. This is hard work and not exactly glamorous, but our volunteer numbers have continued to grow as the program gains momentum. We are excited to work with scientists to analyze the data collected by volunteers and look forward to expanding our program in the coming years with more volunteers, monitoring sites, and, of course, more native oysters.
We are now hiring an Oyster Monitoring Intern to assist with the implementation of our Native Oyster Restoration and Monitoring Campaign program. Duties include coordinating with scientists to build new native oyster reefs in the bay, initating a bay-wide monitoring protocol with the Native Oyster Working Group, and recruiting volunteers. Click here for more information
