Millions of Oysters Restored to North Carolina Coast
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WILMINGTON, N.C. For the past three years, The North Carolina Coastal Federation has been working to restore 50 million oysters to the coast in the hopes of growing the dwindling population. The initial goal was to create 50 acres of oyster reefs and have one million oysters on each acre.
“We want to be the Napa Valley of oysters here,” says Bonnie Mitchell, a coastal education coordinator with the Coastal Federation. “We have such a valuable, wonderful resource, but unfortunately over the past 100 years we ve seen those oyster populations decline about 90%.”
They used recycled oyster shells to start the reefs and then allowed wild oysters to naturally repopulate. When they took inventory at the end of 2020, they were shocked to find 140 million oysters growing on the new reefs, nearly tripling their goal.