1:10 A.M. — With the metallic scritch
of rakes and shovels on calcium carbonate at Sanibel's Bowman's Beach, sweating
researchers and volunteers filled orange buckets with white fossilized shell.
Next, the shell was packed into mesh bags that will be used to build oyster
reefs in Clam Bayou.
These reefs, in turn, will provide habitat for fish and invertebrates and
help clean the bayou's water.
"You've got to protect what you have and rebuild what you can to keep
the fish around," volunteer Drew Chicone, 30, of
In addition to building oyster reefs, the Sanibel-Captiva
Conservation Foundation Marine Laboratory and the city of
Grants for the $140,000 project have been supplied by Sanibel, The Nature
Conservancy, the National Association of Counties, and the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration.
Before extensive development on Sanibel and Captiva,
the 460-acre Clam Bayou was connected to Pine Island Sound and the
When natural forces and human activities, particularly building
In 2006, a $650,000 project placed a 30-foot-wide culvert under
Healthy oyster reefs are an important part of many estuaries - a single
oyster can filter 1 to 10 gallons of water per hour, and a square meter of
oyster reef can be home to thousands of animals, which become food for such
fish as snook, redfish and sheepshead.
The reef-building project is a way to bring oysters back to Clam Bayou.
"With the culverts, we have good flow, and oyster larvae are coming in
from Pine Island Sound," said Loren Coen,
director of the SCCF marine lab. "But oyster larvae need something hard to
settle on. Throw a can or a chunk of something hard out there, and they'll take
off."
Oyster reef projects sometimes use what is known as "green shell,"
oyster shells recently shucked at restaurants.
This project will use 70 tons of fossilized shell - including oyster, conch,
whelk and clam - because green shell is difficult to find.
"Green shell works better because it still has organic material on
it," Coen said. "Oysters are attracted to
other oysters, so the organic material attracts oyster larvae."
Volunteers will put about 3,000 50- to 60-pound bags of shell at four
locations in Clam Bayou this spring during oyster spawning season.
But first, volunteers and researchers will spend every Tuesday morning in
February filling mesh bags with shell.
The work involves digging with rakes and shovels into large mounds of hard,
tightly packed shell, a task that's nothing like planting vegetables in soft
dirt.
"It's pretty strenuous," Chicone said.
"You definitely break a sweat."
Joan Hession, 67, of
"I just wanted to see what they're doing here," she said. "A
big discussion up there is whether to introduce non-native oysters to the bay.
Here they're promoting local oysters, and I wanted to see how it works."
Taking a break from the strenuous, sweaty work, Sanibel resident and
novelist John Raffensperger, 81, who writes under the
name John Luck, might have stretched the truth a little about his reasons for
volunteering.
"The media said there would be a free oyster breakfast and free
beer," he said crustily. "I came down bright and early and parked my
car, and they told me I'd get a ticket if I didn't help with this nonsense.
It's not fair for the media to lie to me to get me to do hard labor."
By the end of Thursday's work session, researchers and
volunteers, including