The expansive work to put more prescribed fire and other important land management practices on the ground throughout the Red Hills has water quality implications as far away as Apalachee Bay down in Wakulla County.
An ongoing project between Tall Timbers, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Services (NRCS) and Tallahassee State College’s Wakulla Environmental Institute(WEI) looks to study the connections between the groundwater recharge that frequent prescribed fire helps provide and the health of wild oyster populations along the Gulf Coast.
The five-year project has resulted in 1,000 concrete oyster “domes” being deployed into the Oyster Bay area of Apalachee Bay, which will then be followed by three years of water quality monitoring to see what impact the bivalves can have on cleaning water.
The domes are hollow concrete structures where young oysters are seeded and allowed to grow and reproduce. They will eventually provide oyster spat to the surrounding waters, helping oysters to colonize historic oyster reefs that have been depleted of living oysters.
Placed near the private oyster aquaculture leases facilitated by TSC’s Wakulla Environmental Institute, the hope is that they provide direct water quality benefits by filtering particulates from passing seawater.
These “oyster farm” aquaculture leases are managed by hardworking men and women who provide the delicious bivalves to area seafood suppliers and restaurants. The aquaculture industry is growing in this area, providing both jobs on the water and economic benefits that ripple through supporting industries.
Tall Timbers’ involvement in the project was born out of the NRCS-funded “Red Hills to the Coast” Regional Conservation Partnership Project (RCPP) project started in 2021.
The partnership agreement with NRCS provides cost-share financial assistance to landowners in the Aucilla and St. Marks/Wakulla rivers watersheds to conduct land management practices focused on habitat and water health, including prescribed fire.
It is well established that forests are the least impactful and most beneficial land uses in regard to water quality. Recent research emphasizes that proper management of forests is needed to maximize the water quality and quantity benefits derived from these areas.
Forest stewardship practices such as prescribed burning, pre-commercial timber thinning, brush management, exotic plant control and related forest stand improvement activities improve the water quality and quantity functioning of forest lands and have important implications downstream.
Connections down the watershed
It’s that work upstream that WEI Director Al Wynn hopes will have an impact in Apalachee Bay.
“As we do the water quality here, we need to make that connection up the watershed and our efforts there,” Wynn said. “Tall Timbers is working on conservation in the watershed which is hugely important in an area when you have nutrients (from agriculture) upstream.”
Al Wynn, the director of the Wakulla Environmental Institute, inspects an oyster in Apalachee Bay.
The domes that are spread across 4 acres of seafloor filter the equivalent of a multi-million dollar water treatment facility.
The project is a multipronged approach. It’s focused on water quality, oyster reef restoration and the resulting benefits to other marine life and seagrasses.
Wynn works on the statewide Coastal Resiliency Program and said not only do oysters provide benefits to water quality, but they also are beneficial in curbing storm surge.
In Florida, 90% of the historic oyster reefs are gone, leaving much of the shoreline unprotected by their natural barrier.
Wynn said a reef sequesters a foot of storm surge for each inch of oyster reef, important as sea level rise becomes a growing concern.
The goal is to be able to take the same model to other places where water quality is diminished.
Wynn said there is potential in places like the Indian River Lagoon, Tampa and the Econfina River. He’s also fielded calls from France about implementation.
“We feel like we can take it anywhere, we feel like this process can go anywhere,” he said. “We would love to be able to take this around the world but we need partners like Tall Timbers.”
