Oct 23, 2008 6:54 pm US/Eastern
Bay Bridge Material Becomes Home For Oysters
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (WJZ) ―
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Despite long odds, a lot of money and effort are still being spent to keep oysters in the Chesapeake.
Despite long odds, a lot of money and effort are still being spent to keep oysters in the Chesapeake.
As
Alex DeMetrick reports, it's a war of numbers against disease and habitat loss.
It takes a conveyor belt to move four million oysters and a big boat to spread them out in the Severn River in Annapolis. But they can't just be tossed anywhere. It's important they land on something solid, up above the mud.
"If you just put the oysters directly onto the bay's bottom, they often run the risk of being smothered over with sediment, and they'll die," said Stephanie Reynolds with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.
The lifesaver turns out to be the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. In a resurfacing job that's gone on for years, old material scraped from the bridge is recycled into small chunks sterilized, donated and dumped by Maryland's Transportation Authority.
To guarantee it went into the right place, divers and geologists had to make sure the bottom would support 2,500 cubic yards of concrete rubble, building a reef two feet high.
The depth has to be just right for spat, the baby oysters which are attached to the shells. To grow to adults, they must survive disease carried on the bay's saltier waters.
Restoring native oysters on man-made reefs is a project funded by private, state and federal funds.
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