About This Project

The Guana River Estuary in northeast Florida is impaired due to excess nutrients, which can fuel eutrophic algal blooms. Oysters naturally filter estuaries, but modern data is limited. This project aims to reconstruct a longer history of oysters using the preserved shells within living reefs. The goal is to quantify how much oysters were capable of filtering in the past compared with today, providing a long-term perspective to inform what oyster restoration decisions are feasible.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

The Guana River Estuary has been labelled an Outstanding Florida Waterbody, meaning it is worthy of special protection because of its natural attributes. However, today the Guana River Estuary is considered ‘impaired’ due to excess nutrients. As a result, eutrophication and harmful algal blooms threaten the environment, species, human health, and local recreation within the estuary.

Shellfish restoration, including oysters, offers a potential solution due to their natural filtration capabilities. Reconstructing the recent history of oyster filtration in Guana River will provide a longer timeline of information to help inform what restoration options are feasible to address water quality concerns.

Rewards for funding pledges:
*All donors will receive project updates and copy of published papers*

If you donate $100 or more, you will be invited to a group Zoom project presentation!

If you donate >$1,000, I will schedule a personal one-on-one Zoom presentation and discussion with you!

What is the significance of this project?

The absence of long-term oyster records is a common problem for resource managers.

The Historical Oyster Body Size (HOBS) project was a collaboration between the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and the Paleontological Research Institution in Ithaca, NY, and an initial pilot study to apply the preserved record of buried shells within living oyster reefs to extend the baseline of information further into the past. HOBS hand-collected oyster shells down to 35cm depth, which for the Guana River, only extended information to 1999.

I tested a vibracore method to collect 5-10ft cores of the oyster reefs in Guana River to extend the baseline even further into the past. I'm working to measure oyster size and estimate historical density to ultimately quantify how much filtration the oysters were capable of over time. This project would provide an example for how to apply these methods in other areas where oyster reefs exist to address similar information gaps.

What are the goals of the project?

The goal is to use oyster size and density from the preserved past to quantify how much filtration Guana River oysters were capable of over time since the Guana River Marsh Aquatic Preserve was established in 1985. This will help inform decisions by managers at the Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve and identify feasible restoration options.

These funds will be used for the radiocarbon dating required for this project and to finish my PhD degree. If our funding target is reached, I will be able to send the samples immediately for analysis and expect to have results in a few months. I will have project conclusions in 2026.

Looking ahead, funding this project will also provide pilot results to inform a larger funding proposal to further test these methods and apply them at a larger scale. There is potential to apply them in other areas where oyster reefs exist to address similar environmental or climate change questions and information gaps.