Shell on reels

We have completed construction on our Barataria oyster reef (also known internally as Reef No. 3) in Hackberry Bay, north of Grand Isle. If you read the previous edition of our newsletter, you’ll recall that there’s a narrative around this project that ties it into the COVID-19 outbreak. The gist of the story is that the factory where the steel cages we use to build the reef had to shut down in January because of the disease. Then the coronavirus spread to the United States. Our offices shut down, and so did our restaurants. Oyster shell collection has yet to resume, although we anticipate that it will soon.

The factory that makes the gabions reopened several months ago, and our contractor, Coastal Environments Inc., used a small crew to load oyster shell onto barges, deliver the shell to the site, and deploy it into the water. Right as Hurricane Laura was menacing our coast, CEI completed the work.

In the final days of reef construction, we took a small group of staff, press and friends of CRCL to see the work in progress. WWL and Fox 8 both did news segments about the Barataria reef and our Oyster Shell Recycling Program. Check ‘em out, and help save Louisiana’s coast by eating some oysters!

Last but not least, Woody Gagliano founded Coastal Environments Inc., our contractor on the Barataria oyster reef, but he was much more than a businessman. Woody was an early authoritative voice warning coastal land loss in Louisiana, and according to Don Boesch, president-emeritus at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, he conceived of “well-designed and located sediment diversions” to build land that are now at the heart of the state’s Coastal Master Plan. He was a towering figure in coastal restoration, and he received several coastal stewardship awards from CRCL for his work, including a lifetime achievement award. He died in July at the age of 84. According to CPRA’s Bren Haase, “Louisiana owes him a great debt for not only sounding the alarm in our coastal crisis, but for never giving up when few would listen.”