In honor of November being Virginia Oyster Month, we want to give you a peek at our Shored Up Oyster Garden!
Here at Shored Up we believe in doing all we can to sustain our waterways and shorelines! So, we purchased an oyster garden kit from Chesapeake Bay Foundation. This kit contains cages with baby oysters in them. The baby oysters, called "spat" will be grown in clumps for restoration purposes.
Downtown Hampton Public Dock is kindly hosting our garden. It is the newest permitted location on the Hampton River!
We will grow them for a year, at which point they will be planted on a sanctuary reef. During their life, they will help filter and clean the water. They will also provide habitat and food for species that live in the waterways as well as stabilize the shoreline.
In addition to the oyster garden, we also added a cage with plain shell to try and "catch" baby oyster larvae from nearby oysters. Check out our results below!!!
Celebrating Virginia Oyster Month with a little oyster gardening!
Barnacles have no problem growing on the cage!
This dirty water is from us cleaning the "dirt" off our oysters. The dirt, called sediment, is a major pollution problem in our waterways and Bay. Oysters help filter it out! Good thing an adult oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water per day!
Our Girl, "Pearl", with all paws on deck!
The baby oysters on these shells "landed" there from nearby oysters that spawned! Some of you tour participants may remember writing a message on them!? Out of 21 shells in our "spat-catcher cage" we have 14 that have oysters on them.
Total so far: 33 wild "Bay-bies" plus all the ones in our garden cage!
You + US= AWESOME!