OCEAN VIEW, DE - Volunteers helped Center for Inland Bays staff stock thousands of oysters in their new reef on Friday afternoon. According to Center officials, the new reef is the largest one the Center has ever built in the bay.
The volunteers took buckets of both spat and adult oysters into the reef when WBOC visited the site. Despite the high tide, volunteers still ferried out to the reef and waded into the waters.
One volunteer, Doug Ludwig, said it's worth braving the water to make a change.
"To give back to the community and to give back to the environment," Ludwig said. "We're continuing to establish a legacy for kids as they come along behind us and hopefully can learn from what we did and make it even better in the future."
Center for Inland Bays science technician Morgan Krell told WBOC that the reef is intended to sustain oysters for years to come.
"There's kind of two challenges we face: we don't have a lot of wild oysters but we also don't have places for wild oysters to live," Krell said. "Any wild oysters that are in the bays will hopefully find their way to the reef and colonize it, but in addition to that we wanna give them a head start."
7500 oysters found their new homes in the reef Friday. According to Center officials, the entire reef is made up of 4 smaller reefs. Volunteers and staff used 17 dump trucks of empty oyster shells, along with other materials, to create the reef in October.
Krell said the new reef will hopefully improve the health of the bay.
"All the oysters living on the reef together, each individual adult oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water a day," Krell said. "They filter our water and they help keep it clean and safe so that we can swim, so we can fish, so we can boat."
According to Krell, the new reef will also provide an extra level of protection.
"The oyster reef itself also helps to protect our shoreline," Krell said. "As we face increasingly stronger storms as our sea level rises, natural ways to protect ourselves from waves and storms are important. Oysters are a great example of that."
Center officials told WBOC they plan to add another 7500 oysters by the end of November. After the finishing touches are put on the reef in December, staff will continue to monitor the reef extensively for three years. Krell said he expects the Center to continue adding more oysters to the reef over the next year.
