Our Oyster Island

I have my own oyster island! Sounds awesome, doesn`t it? That is what I thought when I first heard the opportunity to partner with the Vester Marine and Environmental Science Research Station and be part of a project to build an oyster island for mangroves. FGCU`s colloquium class required each student to do ten hours of service-learning regarding the mission of the class, which are sustainability, environmental literacy and sense of place. 

I was in a team with four of my classmates and our project was to collect oyster shell donations from local restaurants then take the shells to the Vester Field Station to the island. Hurricane Wilma destroyed the island in 2005 and it is now our mission to rebuild it. It caught my attention at the very first day of class and it has been very interesting ever since. We have received donations from Fish Company Restaurant, Uptown Larry`s, Pinchers Crab Shack and Blue Pointe. We really appreciate their cooperation!

Look how much oysters we got!

Along with our project we participated at the Riverfest event in Bonita Springs where we had a table to represent our project and educate the community about it. Many people seemed interested and fascinated by the information we gave them on the benefits of oysters. Oysters are natural water filters as one oyster can filter about two gallons of water per hour. Since oysters filter the water, sunlight gets through it easier, helping plant growth. They provide habitat for juvenile fish, invertebrates as well as substrate for sessile organisms. They also provide a place to live and food for sea animals like mollusks, crabs, sponges, fish and birds.

Individually we also started collecting and rooting mangroves at home. We are probably going plant them in the nursery or on the island next time we go out there.

On these pictures you can see a before and after picture of the island. I know there is not a big difference but where you can see the lighter oyster shells; those are the ones we added to it. The rebuilding of the island started with the Eagle scouts and now FGCU Eagles are continuing. Bob Wasno, our supervisor, had a great idea: how cool would that be, if the island would have an eagle shape?! I am sure we would all like that very much!

Before

After

By this project we did not only educate our community, family and friends about the project but we learned a lot too. I learned so much about oysters I did not event know before. Now I know how important they are in our ecosystem and recycling them represents sustainability. Sometimes we do not even know that so many things we throw away can be recycled in many ways. I never thought that oyster shells could be beneficial to anything.
Hopefully we can continue and see the growing of the island and a decade or two later we can proudly show it to our children. Needless to say, we all had a great time with this project. The picture speaks to itself: we had fun. Oh and once we were "Garden Angels" and now we are "Oyster Angels"