Reef ball placement helps oysters
BY MARY ANNA RODABAUGH
FROM FRONT
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OYSTER -- A team of 16 workers on Wednesday deployed 200 concrete
oyster reef balls into waters off the Eastern Shore's southern seaside areas in
an effort to help restore Virginia's native oyster population.
Jake Perkinson, a 2007 graduate of Tandem Friends School in
Charlottesville, with the help of Gus Lorber, president of Allied Concrete in
Charlottesville, decided to build concrete reef balls for a senior project.
"This project started
when Gus called me
about a year or so ago
about getting involved in
oyster restoration. He
recruited Jake and got
him working through the
school," said Barry
Truitt, the chief
conservation scientist of
The Nature
Conservancy's Virginia
Coast Reserve.
With the assistance of
Todd Barber, founder
and chairman of The
Reef Ball Foundation,
Perkinson spent months molding and building the reef balls in time for
summer deployment.
Truitt led the deployment team to two sites, one in Magotha Bay and one off
the coast of Smith Island.
In all, 109 reef balls were deployed in Magotha Bay and around 91 off the
coast of Smith Island.
An additional 90 reef balls will be deployed at another site near Smith Island
next month.
The concrete is environmentally friendly and mocks an oyster habitat. Oyster
shells were scattered along with the reef balls at the Smith Island site. This.....
