Teams help salvage live oysters from artificial oyster reefs on Alabama shoreline
Mobile Bay area conservation organizations and volunteers gathered at the southernmost point of Bayou La Batre to help salvage oysters, an important component of the Gulf Coast marine ecosystem.
The efforts focused on helping salvage live oysters from artificial oyster reefs, called ReefBlksTM, to clean up the waterways before the next stage of restoration at Coffee Island.
“At the Coffee Island Project, we’re permitting a 2-mile rock breakwater on the southeast side, and we’re hoping to put it out for bid late summer or early fall,” said Mary-Kate Brown, assistant coastal program director for the Nature Conservancy in Alabama.
The Alabama Port and Coffee Island Project were built with the NOAA American Recovery and Reef Act in 2010. With that project, The Nature Conservancy used three different types of reef structures, such as the ReefBLKs.
“We’ve been monitoring those projects for the last fourteen years,” Brown said. “Alabama Port and Mobile County noticed that they needed something to retrofit the Dauphin Island Causeway to go along with the huge project there. The Nature Conservancy decided to do a similar thing for Coffee Island, as it is the second largest barrier island to Dauphin Island. It is a habitat for birds and critters but is also a storm buffer for the communities of Bayou La Batre and Coden.”
Dedicated teamwork and volunteers from local companies, including Alabama Power, Volkert Inc. and students from the University of South Alabama, helped The Nature Conservancy with this next stage of restoration.
“We are working with the state, Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, and engineers to design a bigger breakwater, and we didn’t want to leave the debris out there that don’t serve a purpose. We’re setting the stage for bigger and better breakwaters,” Brown said.
The live oysters that volunteers collected from the ReefBLKs will be taken to the Lightning Point Restoration Project that the Nature Conservancy finished in 2020. Nature Conservancy is working alongside Dauphin Island Sea Lab to place the oysters on existing breakwaters, adding another layer to the breakwater and existing habitat.
Members of the Mobile Chapter of the Alabama Power Service Organization (APSO) were among volunteers helping with the project.
To learn more about the volunteer efforts of Alabama Power employees and retirees, visit powerofgood.com and click on “Volunteers.”