Reviewed by: Cindy Hatcher
Restoring oyster reefs: Alabama’s coastal revival
Reading time: 7 minutes
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You might love them fried, grilled or raw, but did you know oysters provide important protection for our coastal habitat?
Oyster reefs were once so plentiful in Mobile Bay that they reached 10 to 12 feet underwater, a height greater than a basketball goal.
“They were underwater hills along Mobile Bay,” described Judy Haner, Coastal Program Director for The Nature Conservancy in Alabama.
Despite their abundance, over the last century, Alabama’s oysters, which are also delicious and known as a renowned culinary delicacy, have dramatically disappeared in the wild.
Why did this happen, and what are Alabamians doing to bring coastal oysters back?
We’ve been reporting on animals that are found only on Alabama’s coasts and bays that need our protection for survival.
In our first two installments, we learned how locals have helped increase the survival of sea turtles and how scientists, educators and volunteers at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab launched a program to protect nature’s gentle giants, the manatee.
In this third story, we look at oysters–how we nearly lost them, the impact they have on the entire coastal ecosystem and important efforts to restore them.
Join us.
Learning from Mother Nature in Alabama
We always seem to be repairing nature in Alabama from actions that unknowingly caused great damage to living things around us.
For example, we dammed most of our rivers in Alabama causing mussels and snails to either go extinct or today, barely hang on for survival.
We suppressed fire, losing most of our longleaf forests.
And because of overharvesting, we nearly lost deer in Alabama by the 1930s.
Fortunately, we are learning from our mistakes. Deer are back and abundant. We are finding ways to help rivers flow for the survival of fish, mussels and snails. Longleaf pine is making a comeback.
And so are the oysters.
Oysters and roadbuilding
One of Mobile’s most historic downtown streets is called Old Shell Road. It begins downtown and sends you west toward New Orleans. Bet you can guess how it got its name: It was created from oyster shells.
“Basically we don’t have rock on the coast, so when people started wanting to move here and build roads, they went into the bay and pulled the shell out and used that as the foundation for the road beds.”
Judy Haner, Coastal Program Director for The Nature Conservancy in Alabama
In addition to the roads, local residents used shells around their homes and driveways. A finite resource, after years and years of harvesting, the once abundant 10-foot+ reefs of oyster shell disappeared.
This disrupted a fragile ecosystem.
“When storms are moving in and out of the bay, whether seasonal, or routine wind events, those oyster reefs are breaking the force of the wave energy down. They help protect that soft shoreline that we love, those marshes that absorb the waters from the floods or the storms.
When oyster reefs were removed, it opened up those soft shore lines to wave energy that it had never seen before, and it started an erosional process that has been really difficult to get a handle on.”
Judy Haner, Coastal Program Director for The Nature Conservancy in Alabama
What we learned: Shorelines need oyster reefs
Much like the dams’ impact on life in our rivers, or fire suppression and the disappearance of longleaf forests, the removal of oyster reefs shattered what Haner calls the “three-legged stool” of our coastal habitat needs including;
- Protecting the shore
- Protecting the marsh
- Enabling sea grasses to thrive
Why does that matter? The sea grasses become the nursery ground for baby fish, shell, shrimp and crabs that we love to eat. Without oysters, the ecosystem is diminished and could possibly collapse.
Scientists and community leaders have learned over the years, the best way to restore the coastal ecosystem is to build back oyster reefs.
“We need to basically put that shell reef complex back in place. We’re helping Mother Nature get her feet back under her.”
Judy Haner, Coastal Program Director for The Nature Conservancy in Alabama
Making oyster reefs
Since we need to build more oyster reefs, how do you do that? Let’s begin with a little oyster building 101.
Oysters reproduce by releasing what we call “spat” into the water—basically baby oysters. They drift and swim with the current going through some changes until they find a suitable permanent home and settle down.
The problem: Since so many of the oyster reefs are gone, the babies wind up landing in the mud and smothering, or on dock piling or old driftwood… anything hard.
That’s why building new oyster reefs, especially with recycled oyster shells, is what needs to be done along Alabama shorelines.
Making oysters, making a community
The good news: According to Judy Haner, Alabamians from all walks of life are working to build back our oysters and reefs.
Here are a few examples of local organizations stepping up;
- TNC is building reefs in places like Bayou La Batre and Lightning Point
- Mobile County Commission is building a massive three-mile reef along the Dauphin Island Causeway
- Aquaculture industry is taking pressure off of the wild stocks by developing the half shell market
- Mobile National Estuary Program and Alabama Department of Natural Resources and Conservation are working with nearly every governmental entity, local business and nonprofit conservation group (Alabama Wildlife Federation, Mobile Baykeeper) on oyster reef rebuilding efforts
University of South Alabama and Dauphin Island Sea Lab provide invaluable research
What YOU can do to build oysters
One oyster reef building project everyone can support today is the Alabama Coastal Foundation’s (ACF) Oyster Shell Recycling Program.
Since its inception, the group has collected 25.8 million shells restoring 95.6 acres of oyster reefs.
Twenty-three local Mobile County and Baldwin County restaurants recycle their shells.
Support them and ACF’s efforts – HERE.
The future of oysters and our environment: Why it matters
The future of oysters is in our hands in Alabama. Haner summed up succinctly why it all matters.
“If we can get the oyster population back to where it was historically, we can protect our shorelines, we can limit storm impacts, and frankly, we can have food on our table from our own backyard for years to come. That food is the oyster, but it’s also all of the fish and the shrimp and the crabs that use the oyster reef as their home.”
Want to learn more oysters and their significance in Alabama? Visit The Nature Conservancy in Alabama webpage about their restoration efforts.
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