With the assistance of a $5 million federal stimulus grant, the Stump Sound project and others like it in the state, including the creation of a 47-acre reef in Pamlico Sound, have expanded more than a decade of work by UNCW researchers and state officials to rebuild the oyster population. The efforts have paid off, according to marine fisheries officials. The state announced that the oyster has rebounded by 400 percent in the past four years, with oystermen landing more bushels this year than any since the pre-red tide harvests of the late 1980s. Marine fisheries directly attributes the recovery to reef-building efforts like the one on Stump Sound. At the Stump Sound site, bulldozers dig into huge mounds of recycled oyster shells, collected across the state at restaurants and from individuals, and load them into wooden bushel baskets. The baskets are transferred onto boats by local oystermen, who are paid by the grant to move the boats across the Intracoastal Waterway to the sound, which lies just inland of Figure Eight Island. The oystermen empty the baskets at marked spots, slowly building a new reef.
UNCW/Jamie Moncrief
Troy Alphin, senior research associate at the UNCW Center for Marine Science, and a group of students monitor the new reefs alongside the oystermen. They will collect data for the next four years, after which the new reef will open for oystermen.
ami wilbur
“Once the site is opened up, fishermen will be able to earn a second round of money because they’ll be able to harvest the oysters that were grown on these shells right here,” said Ted Wilgis, coastal education coordinator for the N.C. Coastal Federation. Oysters thrive in the calm waters of the Intracoastal Waterway. While the state has several species of oyster, the eastern oyster, Crassostrea virginica, accounts for the vast majority of the harvest on the East and Gulf coasts. Research has shown that while oysters can settle on artificial reefs of concrete or debris, they are biologically attuned to seek out other oyster shells.