Native oyster gets help building new homes

Efforts are under way to return the native Olympia oyster to some of its old habitat in Eld Inlet.

Last week, The Nature Conservancy and a number of partners started spreading about 265 cubic yards of gleaming white oyster shells on about 1 acre of tide flats in Frye Cove, blanketing the muddy bottom of the cove.

The empty shells serve as a place for baby Olympia oysters to attach and grow.

“There’s Olympia oyster larvae floating around right now, looking for a home,” said Brian Allen, a biologist with the Puget Sound Restoration Fund, one of the partners in a $100,000 project funded by federal and foundation grants.

A three-man crew from Taylor Shellfish Farms, another partner in the project, did the heavy work, hauling barges piled with oyster shells across the project site. The piles shrank quickly as a high-powered water hose was used to blast the shells into the water.

This is the third Olympia oyster restoration project coordinated by The Nature Conservancy in Puget Sound, and the second in South Sound. The others are in Liberty Bay near Poulsbo and Woodard Bay in Henderson Inlet.

The sites share at least two things in common: They had existing, albeit sparse, populations of Olympia oysters already in place, and test plots of Olympia oysters fared well enough to justify full-blown restoration projects, said Betsy Lyons, marine conservation project manager for The Nature Conservancy.

Olympia oyster recovery projects are part of a larger undertaking by The Nature Conservancy, the Trust for Public Land and People for Puget Sound on the shorelines of Puget Sound, Lyons said.

The goal is to create 10 new parks or natural areas, restore 100 miles of shoreline and protect 1,000 miles of shoreline by June 2009, Lyons said.

Ian Larson is one of four Frye Cove private property owners who, along with the state Department of Natural Resources, are providing the tidelands for the project.

“I see it as a way of participating in the larger Puget Sound restoration effort,” he said. “This is a good thing to try to bring back the native oyster to Puget Sound.”

The property owners agree to leave the slow-growing oysters alone for at least five years so their growth and survival rates can be monitored.

That’s fine with Larson, who said he has no plans to harvest the tiny oysters.

The private property owners helped pay for the project through a $5,700 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service and its Wildlife Habitat Incentive Program.

The program typically works to restore native prairie habitat but works in the water, too, USDA official Monica Hoover said.

“We’re assisting private landowners put in the foundation for a healthy marine ecosystem,” Hoover said. “The oysters are just the beginning.”

If the oysters survive in Frye Cove in healthy numbers, the tiny bivalves will build up broad expanses of shell that will provide food and habitat for marine life.

And as the oysters reproduce, they will send out larvae of their own, looking for other new homes in South Sound.