Besides being thought of as a tasty snack, oysters also serve a greater purpose: they improve our water quality by acting as natural filters, keeping pollutants from the land out of Tampa Bay, and they're beneficial to the bay's ecosystem as a food source. Unfortunately, the oyster habitats are being destroyed due to the loss of natural shorelines in populated, urbanized areas like Bayshore Boulevard in Tampa and the Vinoy Basin in St. Petersburg.
The Tampa Bay Watch group has been working the past few years to build Reef Balls® (or oyster domes) to help the oysters repopulate. These marine-friendly, concrete domes are placed in specific areas around Tampa Bay — eroding shorelines, dredged canals, sea walls, etc. — to rebuild the oyster habitats and the shorelines.
In 2007 and 2008, Tampa Bay Watch built and installed 3,000 oyster domes. They're no where near finished with this project and can use all of the help they can get from the community.
This article appears in Sep 9-15, 2010.