Florida's Indian River Lagoon used to be filled with oysters. But in the mid-1990s they all but vanished. No one knows why. Now Brevard County leaders and environmentalists think oysters can help save the lagoon.
John Taylor stands over a pile of cement-colored oyster shells and a drill press on a dusty table. One by one he bores a hole in each shell. Dust flies.
"And it takes about as long to drill a shell as it does attach to the mat", Taylor says.
The mats he's talking about each have 36 shells attached. They'll be submerged in the Indian River Lagoon, where they'll form the foundations of new oyster reefs. Taylor drills the shells at least once a month.
"So when you've got 15 volunteers attaching the drilling needs to be done all the time", explains Taylor.
We're outside a classroom of Riverwalk, a Brevard County park. Inside hundreds more oyster shells are strewn on tables. A few dozen volunteers will spend the next few hours attaching them to the mats. Together more than 36,000 volunteers like Taylor have created enough mats since 2007 to fill the lagoon with more than 4.5 million oysters. The Brevard Zoo runs the program.
Ernie Brown is director of the Brevard County Natural Resources Management Department. He says an oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water a day.
"That's the natural process", says Brown. "It does it by itself. We don't have to build anything. We don't have to buy land to do that. This is just what nature does."
That's important in the Indian River Lagoon, which is in crisis. In recent years the 156-mile lagoon has been besieged by pollution and algal blooms that have killed off dolphins, pelicans and manatees and 47,000 acres of sea grasses.
Anne Birch of the Nature Conservancy says oysters also prevent erosion and provide food and habitat.
"And they really are the muscle a lot of times in estuaries where they're pumping water and they're holding back waves from shorelines", Birch says.
Now county leaders want to expand on that. They're putting $150,000 toward a new program to replenish the lagoon with a million more oysters by the end of 2014.
Beginning in January the Brevard Zoo will give a thousand waterfront residents oysters they'll submerge in cages from their docks. Together the oysters will filter up to 50 million gallons of water a day. The residents also will monitor the oysters' health.
All of this means a lot more drilling for John Taylor.
"All of it is predicated on these shells. So this whole job is labor intensive", Taylor says. "And I love the river. So that's why I do it."
Putting a million more oysters in the lagoon is just the beginning. County leaders want to bring clams back, too. Eventually they want enough clams and oysters in the Indian River Lagoon to filter all of its water at least once a year.