Oysters could one day be the answer to the complex question of how to protect California’s disappearing coastline.

While a project to restore oyster populations is still in its early stages, restoration efforts by Orange County Coastkeeper have attracted tens of thousands of native oysters to a habitat that also helps stabilize shorelines while improving water quality.

About 30 volunteers, mostly students from Cal State Long Beach and Cal State Fullerton, worked in the Alamitos Bay in Long Beach, Saturday, March 7, to expand a habitat designed to restore the Olympia oyster population, a native species that has been nearly wiped out.

Students and volunteers with Orange County Coastkeeper make a bucket brigade as they put in oyster beds at the Jack Dunster Marine Reserve in the Alamitos Bay, in Long Beach on Saturday, March 7, 2020. The goal is to restore the Olympia Oyster species and to add a natural buffer to restore shorelines. The shells used come from restaurants and are baked in the sun over a year before being placed in the beds. (Photo by Brittany Murray, Press-Telegram/SCNG)

Students and volunteers with Orange County Coastkeeper volunteered their time to put in oyster beds at the Jack Dunster Marine Reserve in the Alamitos Bay, in Long Beach on Saturday, March 7, 2020. The goal is to restore the Olympia Oyster species and to add a natural buffer to restore shorelines. The shells used come from restaurants and are baked in the sun over a year before being placed in the beds. (Photo by Brittany Murray, Press-Telegram/SCNG)

Students and volunteers with Orange County Coastkeeper volunteered their time to put in oyster beds at the Jack Dunster Marine Reserve in the Alamitos Bay, in Long Beach on Saturday, March 7, 2020. The goal is to restore the Olympia Oyster species and to add a natural buffer to restore shorelines. The shells used come from restaurants and are baked in the sun over a year before being placed in the beds. (Photo by Brittany Murray, Press-Telegram/SCNG)

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Students and volunteers with Orange County Coastkeeper volunteered their time to put in oyster beds at the Jack Dunster Marine Reserve in the Alamitos Bay, in Long Beach on Saturday, March 7, 2020. The goal is to restore the Olympia Oyster species and to add a natural buffer to restore shorelines. The shells used come from restaurants and are baked in the sun over a year before being placed in the beds. (Photo by Brittany Murray, Press-Telegram/SCNG)

Students and volunteers with Orange County Coastkeeper volunteered their time to put in oyster beds at the Jack Dunster Marine Reserve in the Alamitos Bay, in Long Beach on Saturday, March 7, 2020. The goal is to restore the Olympia Oyster species and to add a natural buffer to restore shorelines. The shells used come from restaurants and are baked in the sun over a year before being placed in the beds. (Photo by Brittany Murray, Press-Telegram/SCNG)



L-R Kai Qian and Daisy Nape dump shells into a basket as they volunteered with Orange County Coastkeeper to put oyster beds in the Jack Dunster Marine Reserve in the Alamitos Bay, in Long Beach on Saturday, March 7, 2020. The goal is to restore the Olympia Oyster species and to add a natural buffer to restore shorelines. The shells used come from restaurants and are baked in the sun over a year before being placed in the beds. (Photo by Brittany Murray, Press-Telegram/SCNG)

Orange County Coastkeeper started oyster restoration work in conjunction with students in 2012 at the Long Beach location. A similar “living shoreline project” began in the Upper Newport Bay in 2015 — that one also incorporates eel grass.

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“It’s really a community and volunteer-driven project,” said Katie Nichols, restoration program director for Orange County Coastkeeper.

More than 85% of the world’s oyster reefs have been lost since the 1900s, through over-harvesting of the species, increased coastal development, destruction of wetlands and increased water pollution, according to Coastkeeper.

“The native Olympia oyster is almost extinct in Southern California,” said Nichols. “The good thing is, there’s enough remnant population here … if we build the right habitat, we can get new juvenile, baby oysters into the sites.”

Native oysters exist primarily as small remnant populations in bays and estuaries.

The team on Saturday used hundreds of pounds of clean Pacific oyster shells, a different species, and put them down in mud flats along with mesh made from coconut husks for the Olympia oysters to settle on.

“A lot of projects on the East Coast use plastic mesh, but this is a biodegradable material,” Nichols said of the coconut husk coir used in the process. “Our effort is unique in that aspect. We’re one of the first to use the coir in this way. It helps to keep the shells consolidated and in one place long enough – eventually it breaks down and it has a good, intact structure for the oysters.”

The use of oyster habitats also could one day be a solution to keeping shorelines intact. Decision-makers are grappling with how to keep many beaches from disappearing, with rising sea levels and erosion chomping away at them.

How the oysters may act as a living shoreline along the coast, however, still needs studying.

“We’re looking at pursuing more funding to see how these perform long term,” Nichols said. “We’re hoping to monitor on a longer scale and that will help us answer that question.”

In addition, restoration of oyster beds also is critical to the resilience of the Alamitos Bay ecosystem, helping to bring in more fish and wildlife. Oysters provide habitat and refuge for other organisms, such as octopuses, crabs and juvenile fish that take shelter on the structure that oyster beds provide.

The oysters also help to improve water quality, serving as filter feeders before water flows into bays and eventually into the ocean, Nichols said.

But that’s why the oysters aren’t quite right for consumption.

“We’re not eating the native oyster yet — water quality is another one of Coastkeeper’s bigger issues,” Nichols said. “We’re not planning the harvesting anytime soon. I don’t think the water quality is good enough that we want to do that, yet.”

But perhaps one day, they’ll be ready to be feasted on.

“That’s a goal.”