Connecting Land and Estuary: Celebrating Earth Day with Vertical Oyster Gardens

Olivia Blondheim, Scientific Outreach Coordinator, shows a VOG to a participant at Brooker Creek Preserve

When you think of ways to celebrate Earth Day, you may imagine picking up trash at a local park, planting trees, or helping in a community garden. At the Gulf Shellfish Institute (GSI), we celebrate Earth Day a little bit differently – with vertical oyster gardens! On Saturday, April 20, 2024 the GSI team participated in Brooker Creek Preserve’s Earth Day Birthday celebration. Among the many festivities, community members had the opportunity to see a live VOG in action, construct VOGs, and enroll in our citizen science program. 

Oysters provide a variety of ecosystem services, including water filtration, habitat for marine animals, and nutrient mitigation. Oysters may seem small, but they are mighty when it comes to helping keep our local waters clean. One individual oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water a day! One way that local organizations like GSI are working to help restore oyster ecosystem services to Tampa Bay is through vertical oyster gardens (VOGs).

VOGs are made of recycled oyster shells that we receive from restaurants. The shells are then strung on a wire and suspended from either a private dock or seawall. Over time, oyster larvae will swim through the water and settle on the shells, which are a suitable home for the larvae to grow into adult oysters. The VOGs are not only a home to oysters, but become like an ‘apartment building’ as other marine animals such as sponges, crabs, and tunicates also find their homes on the shells. At GSI, we are interested in learning more about whether VOGs are a good tool for helping restore ecosystem services to Tampa Bay. One way we are doing this is by hosting VOG construction events and helping community members enroll in our citizen science program.

During the event we loved seeing the enthusiasm of everyone who participated, but especially our younger ‘Oyster Explorers’ who not only eagerly helped build VOGs but also colored their own VOG artwork to take home and share with their friends and family. During the event, community members helped to build over 100 VOGs! Nine people took a VOG home and enrolled in our citizen science program, agreeing to hang a VOG from their own dock and allowing GSI staff to monitor it over the next year. The remaining VOGs will be distributed to one of the seven VOG boxes across the Tampa Bay region, with 40 VOGs added to Brooker Creek Preserve’s VOG box that day.

Earth Day is a day for giving back to our planet and remembering the actions that we can take every day to make sure that the land and water we rely on are healthy for generations to come. We are grateful for everyone who took the time to learn more about oysters and helped in our efforts to restore oyster ecosystem services to Tampa Bay. To learn more about our citizen science program and how you can get involved, visit: [insert new website link]