The Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) celebrates a near record-breaking year for its oyster gardening program in Virginia as November marks Virginia Oyster Month.
This comes as CBF joined partners to participate in the “Shellabration” in Hampton, as well as commemorated the five-year anniversary of the beloved barges that make up CBF’s cutting-edge mobile oyster restoration center. All three developments marked milestones for CBF during Virginia’s month dedicated to this iconic Chesapeake Bay bivalve.
This year’s oyster gardening program saw the second-highest ever participation with 627 volunteers across Virginia’s tidal waterways raising and returning over 110,000 oysters in 2024. Significantly, the number of oyster gardeners who raise their oysters at public docks and marinas rather than private waterfront property doubled to 64 families and organizations.
“It changed the trajectory of my life. At first, you start raising oysters to give back to the planet,” said Claire Neubert, a public oyster gardener for CBF at the Hampton docks. “I live in an urban environment, and it’s amazing to find these babies flourish given all the challenges they face. At the end of the day, it really becomes a question of who’s growing who.”
Oyster gardeners raise baby oysters to adults over the course of a year. The oysters grow in wire cages off docks to eventually be planted on sanctuary reefs. Because adult oysters can filter up to 50 gallons of water a day, the oysters returned to CBF this year as adults will end up filtering more than 5 million gallons of water a day.
“There’s nothing quite like the connection between these baby oysters and their foster parents. The dedication and love it takes to raise these oysters, from cleaning cages to sending them off to live out on sanctuary reefs, is nothing short of special,” said Jessica Lutzow, CBF’s Virginia Oyster Restoration Specialist.
Floating Oyster Restoration Center Marks Five Years
At the same time, CBF’s mobile barges marked five years since their 2019 christening as the Prudence H. and Louis F. Ryan Mobile Oyster Restoration Center. These two linked barges hold six 850-gallon tanks and can travel from one Virginia river to the next, allowing CBF to restore local oyster populations more efficiently. By giving oysters a place to attach to recycled shells and other alternative substrate such as reef balls before their planting on nearby sanctuary reefs, these barges have been instrumental as the Chesapeake Oyster Alliance marks 6 billion oysters added to the Bay.
After cleaning, CBF expects the barges to be briefly reunited in the coming weeks prior to one of the barges moving to the Hampton River for oyster restoration work.
A ‘Shellabration’ in Hampton
Most recently, the CBF oyster team hosted educational demonstrations November 16 on the oyster’s life cycle for the third annual “Shellabration,” a free festival in Hampton honoring the Chesapeake Bay and organized by the Downtown Hampton Development Partnership.
“Shellabration is great way to educate and engage the community in the exciting plans that are creating synergy around oyster restoration in the Hampton River,” CBF’s Virginia Oyster Restoration Manager Jackie Shannon said.
Learn more about CBF’s oyster restoration work in Virginia.
Virginia Communications & Media Relations Manager, CBF
[email protected]
804-258-1567
