美国国家公共电台 NPR Gulf Oyster Reefs Are Hurting. Now There's Help From Oil Spill Aid Money

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Oyster 1 harvests along the Gulf 2 Coast have been in decline for decades now. Actually, this year, Alabama canceled its season because there were so few oysters 3. NPR's Greg Allen reports that help may be on the way thanks to millions of dollars in aid after the BP oil spill.

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GREG ALLEN, BYLINE 4: Off Cedar 5 Key on Florida's West Coast, this is some of the most pristine 6 water in the Gulf. It's long supported a thriving seafood 7 industry. Sue Colson, a city commissioner 8 here, says one of the best places to harvest oysters used to be the Lone 9 Cabbage oyster reef. When the tide was really low, she says, there were so many oysters you could walk along the reef and pick them up.

SUE COLSON: We would pull our children out of school on a really, really, really, really blowout tide. And everybody would pick up and get as many as you could in that time that they were exposed.

ALLEN: Those days are long gone on Lone Cabbage Reef. Over the last 30 years, Peter Frederick, a wildlife ecologist from the University of Florida, says oysters that build and make up the reef have died off.

PETER FREDERICK: So once they die and you lose those, then the reef starts degrading and losing elevation 10. So we've been seeing about three to four inches loss a year of elevation, which is a lot out here.

ALLEN: When the reef is gone, it leaves behind sandbars that young oysters can't attach to. It's a problem seen throughout the Gulf. Scientists say 80 percent of the oyster reefs have been lost in recent decades. There are many reasons - overharvesting, drought, even hurricanes. But Frederick says a major factor is a lack of fresh water. Agriculture and development is claiming much of the water that used to flow down rivers, leaving estuaries 11 like this one too salty.

FREDERICK: The Eastern oyster, which is what we have here, likes an intermediate salinity 12. It doesn't like full-strength seawater. And at high salinities, it tends to become susceptible 13 to its diseases and parasites 14. And so they tend to decline fairly rapidly.

ALLEN: Here and throughout the Gulf, a lot of work is going on to help oysters and the communities that depend on them. Frederick has been overseeing efforts to restore Lone Cabbage Reef. It's a nearly $7 million project that has rebuilt the 3 1/2 mile long reef. Standing 15 on a barge 16 alongside it, Frederick says instead of oyster shells, this reef was rebuilt using rock.

FREDERICK: Well, we've had to have heavy equipment like barges 17 and cranes, trucks and breaking equipment at a quarry 18 in order to get all this stuff out here.

ALLEN: It's a project paid for with money from the BP oil spill settlement. Billions of oysters were killed in the spill, and that was just a small part of the extensive damage done to the environment. One hundred and sixty million dollars of the fund is earmarked for oysters.

BOB BENDICK: The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is a unique - maybe once in a generation or forever opportunity to reverse the decline of oysters in the Gulf.

ALLEN: Bob Bendick is overseeing several projects to restore oysters in the Gulf for the Nature Conservancy. The group has recently helped rebuild an oyster reef in Texas' Matagorda Bay. It's beginning a similar project soon in Florida's Pensacola Bay. Bendick says one idea being discussed is a project that would build a chain of new oyster reefs across the Gulf.

BENDICK: They could be kind of oyster sanctuaries 19 that would produce more oysters.

ALLEN: On Florida's Big Bend coast, there's a lot of support for efforts to rebuild oyster reefs. Fishing, harvesting oysters, crabs 20 and clams 21 is an industry and a way of life here that's long been under pressure. Jack 22 Payne, who directs natural resource research at the University of Florida, says restoring the reefs may also help prepare us for climate change.

JACK PAYNE: Oyster reefs are wonderful natural barriers to storms and hurricanes that we're going to see more of and sea level rise. So this is something that we hope we can apply throughout the Florida coastal 23 system.

ALLEN: On Lone Cabbage, there are already encouraging signs. Researchers say young oysters are beginning to show up on the reef. Greg Allen, NPR News, Cedar Key, Fla.

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