Strings attached: Huntington Harbour Yacht Club members to create ‘oyster condos’
- Share via
A single adult oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water per day.
Huntington Harbour residents are now doing their part to restore a native population of Olympia oysters while cleaning up their water at the same time.
More than 200 empty shell strings were handed out by Orange County Coastkeeper volunteers during an event Sunday at the Huntington Harbour Yacht Club.
The program began in 2021 after the U.S. Navy, which was dealing with coastal erosion at the Naval Weapons Station in Seal Beach, reached out to the nonprofit, according to Matt Sylvester, OC Coastkeeper’s communications director.
The shell strings, part of the OC Coastkeeper Living Shorelines program, have been deployed through the Long Beach Yacht Club for the last four years to benefit Alamitos Bay. This is their first time they’ll be used in Huntington Beach.
“We call them kind of ‘oyster condos,’” Sylvester said. “They’re just little shelves, so the larvae have a place to attach onto. … Larvae are just really looking for something hard to attach to, to live on and make a habitat. What better than a shell from a different oyster?”
Residents are instructed to go to their docks at high tide with the shell strings, keeping them about 18 inches above the bottom of the harbor. Every two weeks, the strings will be placed in direct sunlight to prevent “fouling” — the attachment of other marine organisms — and promote oyster growth.
A shell string collection event will be held in September for native oysters, OC Coastkeeper Marine Restoration Director Kaysha Kenney said. They’ll be taken to the Seal Beach National Wildlife Refuge, which shares the same waterway as Huntington Harbour.
There, the oysters will be put in temporary housing before beds can be built in either 2026 or 2027.
Oysters have several benefits, Kenney said, including filtering pollutants like microplastics and microalgae while providing habitat for other animals like juvenile fish, clams, mussels and octopuses. Building the oyster beds helps stabilize the shoreline, which is being lost due to sea level rise and coastal development, she added.
Huntington Harbour Yacht Club members are enthusiastic about the project, said Commodore Steve Parsons, who was key in bringing it to the club.
Harbor Commissioner Dee Wood is herself a yacht club member.
“A big goal of mine is the sense of community,” Wood said. “If people start caring about their harbor, the club, clean water, you have that sense of connection. That’s what you’re finding today. These are all neighbors that are saying, ‘Yeah, count me in, I want to grow a baby oyster.’”
Huntington Beach Mayor Pat Burns and Councilwoman Gracey Van Der Mark both attended Sunday’s event. Van Der Mark left with several shell strings for her neighbors.
“I don’t have a house on the water, but I want to learn about it and see how this can help,” she said.
Cal State Fullerton graduate students Leeza-Marie Rodriguez and Dan Gifford also helped out with distribution. Sylvester said that all Living Shorelines projects collaborate with the marine biology labs at Cal State Long Beach and Cal State Fullerton.
“I think it’s really good to bridge the gap between academia and the general public, to get them involved in any kind of science,” said Rodriguez, who is pursuing her master’s degree in biology. “It shows that it is accessible to everyone, or at least it can be. It’s really cool to see the energy from the community as well, to be super-excited about wanting to help.”
All the latest on Orange County from Orange County.
Get our free TimesOC newsletter.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Daily Pilot.
