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While the solstice hasn't yet come, summer is in full swing here at SRA. Our summer interns are hard at work with water quality monitoring, mapping restoration projects, and connecting with volunteers and summer camps. We are thrilled to have met our fundraising goal earlier this month during the GreenGive campaign, and will be putting that money to use planting 10 million oysters in the river later this summer. The SRA work boat Sea Girl has been outfitted with a new engine to ensure we can keep a keen eye out on the river's health as the weather warms up. This time of year is historically when warmer water temperature and excessive nutrient input from lawn fertilizer, septic tank effluent, and erosion can cause algae blooms which discolor the water and rob it of oxygen. Keep an eye on our social media channels to learn week-by-week updates on all our programs.
One positive feature of warmer weather is that oysters prefer it for spawning, waiting until the water warms to nearly 80F. For us at SRA, that means the time is getting ripe to employ our direct-setting approach for oyster restoration. "Direct Setting" means deploying free-swimming oyster larvae directly onto an existing oyster reef, rather than planting spat-on-shell. We want to mimic the oysters' natural spawning conditions as closely as possible to ensure the highest possible survival rates for these oysters. Restoration manager Ben Fertig is working with two of our summer interns to develop the pump apparatus that will deposit the oysters on the reef, and we are looking to plant later in July.
From all of us at SRA, we hope you're enjoying summer as much as we are, and we will see you out on the river!
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