Apalachicola Bay Oyster Restoration Support

The Apalachicola River watershed is one of the most biologically diverse ecosystems in the US. Ecologically and economically significant Apalachicola Bay oyster reefs are currently in a degraded state likely due to reduced freshwater inflows. While the impacts of the oil spill on northern GulfofMexico oysters is not fully quantified, the spill reinforced the need to invest in maximizing the resiliency of oysters and the many species they support. This need is particularly acute in Apalachicola Bay, where oysters provide vitally important ecological and economic services to a large geographic region. While Apalachicola Bay has a long history of oyster restoration activities, the long-term success of these projects measured in terms of promoting resilience of oyster reefs to disturbance is limited. Promoting resilience to disturbance should be the key objective of restoration actions for oyster reefs particularly as environmental factors (e.g. freshwater flows into Apalachicola Bay) are very likely to become more variable in the near future. This necessitates that restoration be done in an adaptive framework that allows the testing of different restoration strategies under a range of environmental and fishing practices to identify practices that promote resilience in oyster reefs in the face of declining freshwater inflows. Knowledge gained from this adaptive research can be used to more efficiently restore habitat impacts to oyster reefs throughout the Gulf.