Orange County Coastkeeper earlier in the week received a bounty of oyster shells, 724 pounds worth, from the recently resurrected DTLA Oyster Festival, brought back after a five-year hiatus.
The hard shells will go toward the nonprofit’s Marine Restoration Project and help launch a new program slated for 2026 to battle wetland erosion at the Naval Weapons Station in Seal Beach.
OC Coastkeeper has used discarded oyster shells for a similar project in Upper Newport Bay for more than a decade, teaming with students at Cal State Long Beach and Cal State Fullerton for the estuary restoration efforts.
The boxes of oyster shells from the two-day festival, hosted by The Oyster Gourmet and Grand Central Market, made their way to a facility at the Irvine Ranch Water District, where they will need to undergo a natural curing process for a year before they are set back out into seawater.
Kaysha Kenney, marine restoration director at OC Coastkeeper, also scoops up boxes of used shells each week from the Blue Water Grill in Newport Beach and Santa Monica Seafood in Costa Mesa.
The recycling program with restaurants has diverted more than 900 pounds of oyster shells from landfills, she said.
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The cured shells are used to create new oyster beds. They are piled in large bundles wrapped up like a giant burrito in netting and placed off the shore.
Once the beds of old shells are set back out in nature, not only do they help battle erosion, they also serve as a natural water filter and a habitat for animals, including oysters that can use the beds as an anchor spot.
“Living shorelines and using the oyster shells are really part of a nature-based solution,” she said. “It’s actually reducing food waste, keeping it out of landfills, and puts it back into wetlands restoration.”
In addition to the shoreline restoration projects, OC Coastkeeper has teamed up with four local yacht clubs and several harbor residents in Los Alamitos Bay that offer their docks for a shell string project, which suspends recycled shells underwater to attract native oyster larvae to help rebound the population.
Students and volunteers prepare Pacific oyster shells at a site in Upper Newport Bay in Newport Beach, CA on Friday, June 7, 2019. The shells are wrapped in the netting like a burrito for Olympia oysters to make the shells their home and use the site as an anchor spot. The project is part of a restoration project with Cal State, Fullerton, Cal State, Long Beach and Orange County Coastkeeper. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Southern California’s oyster population rapidly declined from overharvesting, coastal development and threats to water quality, said Kenney.
“This is a significant concern for our region, as oysters play a crucial role in maintaining healthy coastal ecosystems,” she said. “By restoring Olympia oysters, California’s only native oyster species, we can take meaningful steps to improve water quality, buffer against rising sea levels, stabilize shorelines, and create essential habitats that benefit fish, wildlife and coastal communities alike.”
The latest project will focus on the Seal Beach National Wildlife Refuge at the naval weapons station adjacent to the Huntington Harbour.
Several areas of the refuge are experiencing coastal erosion, one of them at the Department of Defense facility.
The project will also incorporate planting eelgrass, and also aims at improving water quality in the harbor and helping the area adapt to rising sea levels while enhancing habitat quality and wildlife connectivity.
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