05-19-06: Wanted: Oysters for Creek

Wanted: Oysters for creek

With a few good taps of the PVC pipe on the ground, the oyster shells shook lose.

"That's the magic," said Edie Steele as her partner Jerry Allred pulled the teal pipe out, leaving the 40-inch-long mesh bag full of shells. "Now we need some more magic."

Ignoring the sun and the sweet salty smell from the stale shells, dozens of volunteers gathered Thursday at Airlie Gardens to make a small contribution toward improving Bradley Creek, the sickest waterway in New Hanover County.

Later this summer, an estimated 1,000 bags of old oyster shells will be placed along the shoreline of the county gardens, creating a "natural rip rap" to stabilize the bank across from Bradley Creek Marina.

But researchers hope the bags do more than just control erosion. The plan is for the oyster shells to help Bradley Creek revive ecologically.

Long a collection area for pollutants running off homes and lawns that ring the waterway and its tributaries, the tidal creek has been closed to shellfishing since World War II.

While the 400-foot-long, 12-foot-wide oyster reef won't be enough to reopen Bradley Creek to shellfishing, N.C. Coastal Federation scientist Tracy Skrabal said the new oysters that latch onto the old shells should help cleanse some of the pollution by filtering the toxic bad stuff - which is then retained in the mollusk's meat.

The new intertidal reef should also provide much-needed habitat for small fish and other marine critters.

"That's a reason enough for us to put them out there," Skrabal said.

The multiyear project, coordinated by the Coastal Federation, is being funded through a $120,000 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Along with the Bradley Creek work, the grant - which is being matched by a slew of state and local groups - includes the construction of an acre-sized oyster reef in Myrtle Grove Sound.

While the sacks of oysters might not have the cleansing impact in the degraded waters of Bradley Creek that they would have in a cleaner environment, Howard Schnabolk said there were other advantages to placing the shells in a public area that would be seen by thousands of visitors annually.

"We're hopefully not only building some habitat but also building a community of supporters for this type of project that serves so many great purposes," said the habitat restoration specialist with NOAA's Charleston, S.C., office.

Thursday's event reflects a new statewide push to help restore oyster reefs.

Decimated by overfishing, declining water quality and disease, North Carolina has lost about 90 percent of its oyster habitat since 1900.

"They are like the proverbial canary in the coal mine telling us that something is wrong with our coastal waters," said Ted Wilgis, a biologist educator with the Coastal Federation.

The loss of the coast's natural water filters comes as more and more people crowd the state's beaches, tidal creeks and sounds, adding to the pressure on coastal waters.

Stormwater runoff, which goes hand-in-hand with development, is the biggest pollutant of coastal waters.

But while officials hope better planning can help fix the situation on land, officials are running into a more immediate problem in trying to fix the situation in the water.

Wilgis said officials are facing a scarcity of shells since Hurricane Katrina destroyed or buried oyster beds all along the Gulf Coast, which is the major source of oysters consumed in North Carolina.

The shells used in Thursday's bagging came from local restaurants and an oyster roast at Airlie Gardens last October.

As he paused after creating another bag of shell hash, Allred said he and Steele didn't mind sweating a little to help the environment.

"Every little bit of help we can offer is very fulfilling because we enjoy the environment and want to make sure future generations have that opportunity also," he said.