Work and Decoys

Carl

Carl

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Spent the last two days moving "oyster dome" breakwater units for a shoreline/salt marsh restoration project. Once we get the rest done, we'll plant Spartina alterniflora between the breakwater and shorlines. We've lost 50' of shore & marsh here in 4 years, this should get it back in shape.
Fun stuff, makes the paperwork side of my job tolerable.

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Got the 1st dzn foamers done and rigged. Hope to get the last dzn done before the opener but I am running out of time. This pic was taken right before I did final tuouch up on bills & heads. Sprayed them with matte clear coat. Must not have shaked the can well, cause two came out shiny. Need to re-spray.

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Carl:

Those oyster dome units--do you place them and wait for them to recruit sediment on their own, or do you import sediment behind them before you plant the spartina?

Jeff
 
We've made something similar to those domes here at my work. I work at a precast concrete plant, and they were used to create artificial reefs for fish. I think ours were a little bigger. VMRC called them reef balls. We also dontate alot of waste or rejected materials for the same use. Makes for great fishing when the grey trout and flounder are running.
 
You can do it both ways.
At the site in the photos in my original post, it is shallow enough that we won't have to put in any sediment. We can just plant the spartina and let it naturally accumulate more sediment.

At the large restoration project I just finished, we put in a breakwater made of much large units and pumped in 130,000 yards of sediment, then planted it. About 30 acres total. Here is an aerial shot of that site before and after. What is a peninsula and island in the top picture used to be one large peninsula. We closed the breach and restored the shoreline to a 1955 alignment. In addition to the marsh being restored, we anticipate that the seagrass beds and oyster beds will expand now that we have cut the wave energy and turbidity inside the bay. Great spot for greater scaup, buffies & redheads too!
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Yep, they are Reef Balls brand units. These are the lo-pro units. We also have 95 mini-bay balls to place. Working in cooperation with USFWS and The Nature Conservancy on this project.
Fish love these things. There will be tons of mullet, pinfish, croakers, crabs, etc.. all around these when the tide is in.
 
Looks like your involved in some pretty good projects there. Keep up the good work, and thanks for sharing.
 
Thanks! I love this stuff.
I get paid to make better habitat, I get to be outdoors getting dirty too.
Makes all the paperwork and boring meeting worth it.
 
Holy cow! Those projects look pretty cool.

For a sense of scale, what's the length of the restored area in the lower photo?

And what happens on the sea-ward side of the structure over time? Do they eventually recruit enough sediment to create a "natural" beach, or do they scour at the toe so you always have visible concrete?
 
The breakwater is ~5,200', so call it a mile. Yep, its big scale, but also a big price tag.

Good question.
Unfortunately, we will always be able to see concrete (or fortunately if you are fishing for redfish & sheepshead!)
They wont accumulate sediment on the seaward side. This is a naturally sediment starved system suffering from the effects of geological-timeframe changes in sediment input, increased fetch & sea level rise. So, there isn't much spare sediment in the system and the fetch is pretty bad. We hope that the new marsh on the leeward side will be able to bio-accumulate sediment & organic matter quick enough to keep up with sea level rise, we'll see what the long term monitoring tells us.

Our geo-tech indicated that the given the base footprint & weight of the breakwater units, they shouldn't subside. However, we are alreading seeing some differential settling. Next time, I think we will put down Geo-mat first and place the units on that. That is how we did the class 4 riprap on the eastern & western ends.

Nice thing about the concrete units vs. rock is that, theoretically, if we get more funds & sediment, we can pick the breakwater up, move it seaward and add more sediment to plant more marsh.
 
Thanks, Carl. Sounds like good work, and I am very impressed by the scale at which you guys are working. Up here, marsh restoration projects are almost all about restoring tidal flow through culverts, causeways, or old tide gates. There is not a lot of dirt moving.

Of course, our marshes don't quite exist on the scale of yours, either . . . . . Your 30 acres would be a decent sized pocket marsh in a lot of the spots I hunt.
 
I'll never tell.......

Just kidding. Yep, your are dead-on, the mouth of the Bayou is on the right side of the pic, mouth of Little River is on the upper left.
 
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This is the biggest project to date in Alabama. I've got others, similar or larger, planned. Just waiting on the money.

In Louisiana, they do stuff on this scale all the time. But then they are losing hundreds and hundreds of acres a year, so its hard to keep up with that.

Dont knock the "small scale" stuff, improving one culvert or removing a couple of tidal gates can have big results, especially in fisheries production & water quality. I like the stuff y'all are doing with small dam removal up there, restoring flows & fish runs.
 
Yes, I think our restoration is more river-focused here, but part of that is because our ecosystems are a lot more river-driven than yours are, and a lot less dependent on marshes. Most of our coast is too steep and rocky to support a lot of marsh, at least until you get down towards Cape Cod and Long Island.


An awful lot of our coastal productivity in pre-colonial days was driven by runs of herring, eels, and other fish running up and down the rivers, with big spring and fall movements of fish offering a ton of forage for migrating critters. (Up here, if you want to find an eagle or anything else that eats fish, find the alewife in the spring, or the eels in the fall. The fish-eaters will be right on them.)

From what I know of the Gulf system, your marsh and estuary systems function in much the same way.
 
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