The boat ramp at the “Buddy” Ward Park west of Apalachicola will be closed to the public Thursday and Friday as FSU researchers use the ramp as a staging area for work they are doing to rebuild oyster harvesting areas in the Apalachicola Bay.
The ramp will be used to load oyster shell as well as two different sizes of limestone rock, which will be deposited on Dry bar as part of an experiment to test the effectiveness and stability of the three different materials.
A similar experiment is taking place on Peanut Ridge in the eastern portion of the bay.
By the end of the deployments, a total of 30 mini-reefs will be deployed, each will be 900 sq feet and 1.5 feet high.
This approach is different from previous restoration efforts that placed a thin layer of material over a large area.
The team is hoping the elevation of these materials will increase survival by keeping the oysters up in the water column where they can access clean water and food.
The reefs will be monitored for oyster recruitment, survival and growth, predator prevalence, disease and reproduction.
This approach of ‘seeding’ wild reefs has been used elsewhere but this will be the first use of hatchery spat-on-shell in Apalachicola Bay.
The work is part of the Apalachicola Bay System initiative, a years long effort designed to learn what has led to the decline of the Apalachicola Bay ecosystem and to develop a restoration plan for the bay.
The Apalachicola Bay once produced about 10 percent of the nation's eastern oyster supply, but the fishery collapsed in 2013.
A moratorium on commercial oyster harvesting in the bay is in effect and could last for 5 years.
In 2019, Florida State University received 8 million dollars in BP Oil spill money to investigate the root causes of the fishery disaster and come up with a plan to fix it.
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