Limestone reefs and legislation will defend Apalachicola Bay ecosystem

Shannon Hartsfield lives his life on a boat in the brackish water offshore from Franklin County–– much like his father, his father’s father, and his father’s father’s father. It used to be him and the oysters in their beds under the charcoal sky, but these nights it’s mostly just him.

After the 2012 collapse of the Apalachicola Bay oyster fishery, many oystermen in the small “Old Florida” port town were stranded without their loyal source of income. This collapse was the aftermath of a series of calamities that plagued the bay’s Eastern oyster population for decades, including hurricanes, droughts, the BP oil spill and persistent over-harvesting.

Oyster harvesting makes up the fabric of Apalachicola's culture and the identity of its residents. At its peak, oystermen from the former “oyster capital of the world” supplied 90% of Florida’s wild oysters and 10% of the nation’s. But now, the oyster fishing industry is all but dead.

Oyster harvesting makes up the fabric of Apalachicola's culture and the identity of its residents. Photo courtesy of Wix.

United to Save the Bay

The Apalachicola Bay System Initiative (ABSI) formed to research the root causes behind the decline of the bay’s ecosystem, particularly the crumbling oyster reefs. The project is a multidisciplinary effort built on work done by several entities, including the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) and headed by the Florida State University’s Coastal & Marine Laboratory (FSUCML.) In January, the ABSI team released a restoration and management plan after four years of thorough discussion with members of the community, government officials and other stakeholders.

Although a collaborative process has been fundamental for the ABSI project, relations between some locals and the scientists have been choppy –– naturally, the bay restoration plan must compromise with people whose livelihoods depend on harvesting oysters.

“The plan is a bit of a misnomer, because it's not a plan,” Dr. Sandra Brooke, principal investigator of the ABSI team, said. “What it is, is a list of alternatives that the community could live with. It's a consensus as in, not everybody agrees with it, but most of them do.”

Brooke, an expert in marine biology and an FSU research faculty member, said the plan’s projected completion date is more of a milestone than a deadline. As of now, it has been voted on by the Community Advisory Board (CAB), distributed to management entities and is currently under review.

Substrates: Sedimentary or Sentimental?

After being taken out on an oysterman’s boat to take extensive samples from the bay, the main reason behind the oyster population’s collapse became clear –– where there were once stable oyster bars, only shell hash remained. There were no reefs left, said Brooke.

To rebuild the reefs, the team conducted many experiments on what substrates worked best to form a stable foundation for oysters to thrive on. They found a winner in larger pieces of limestone built up about a half-meter high, which could resist wave erosion and easily facilitated oyster growth.

As a keystone species, oysters are ecosystem engineers that filter up to 50 gallons of water each a day. They are also excellent indicator species used to monitor water quality changes according to the FWC website. When oyster larvae settle on a hard substrate, they can develop massive, complex reefs. These reefs not only provide refuge for other species but protect coastlines from wave erosion.

“The idea behind that material was to recreate some of the structural complexity that you see in a natural reef in the hopes that the animals that usually live in a natural reef would recolonize and create an ecosystem, and not just be a bunch of oysters sitting on a bunch of rocks,” Brooke said.

But some Apalachicola oystermen insist that only shell hash should be dumped into the bay to grow oysters, because that’s the natural, traditional method that has been done for generations. Some also believe that the bay should be opened regardless of the environmental consequences, and that outside intervention is unneeded.

“The fishing community in Franklin County has a long tradition of fishing everything, but specifically oysters. So, they seem to think that...this is a temporary glitch and all they need to do is carry on fishing and everything will be fine,” Brooke said. “They're very, very angry that the fishery was closed. They don't think it was temporary. They think it was our fault.”

The World’s Mine Oyster!

Limestone reefs won’t be enough to protect the bay unless legislation is established to prevent over-harvesting, said Shannon Hartsfield with a confident twang suggesting an oysterman’s intuition. In the time since the bay closed, poaching has become an issue that is difficult to deter.

“They've got a big following because they want the bay to open up. They don't care what the harvest is or anything,” Hartsfield said. “They've been poaching oysters a lot and they can't even stop them from poaching when the bay is closed –– I don't know how they're going to do it while it's open.”

Hartsfield, a member of the ABSI community advisory board, said that stricter regulations and larger fines need to be put in place to deter people from poaching and over-harvesting in the future. As of now, the fines are such a fraction of the overall profit that poaching is still a lucrative hustle.

Even if the restoration plan is a success, the maintenance of the bay ecosystem will be an ongoing challenge, said Brooke.

“If they open up the fishery on Jan. 1st, 2026, the FWC needs to come in with more sophisticated management,” Brooke said. “What's going to happen is...they're going to go out and fish as much as they possibly can. They will probably just deplete the system because it's very fragile at the moment. So, if they allow that to happen, we could easily be back to where we were before.”

To ensure that the restoration and management plan is implemented instead of left to collect dust, the CAB formed a successor group, dubbed the Partnership. This group of stakeholders partnered with the FWC will act as “watchdogs” who hold other members of the community and government officials accountable.

Despite the languishing oyster industry, Apalachicola is still renowned for its oysters. Local seafood restaurants have adapted by sourcing their oysters from out of state for the time being. Many oystermen are waiting with a fisherman’s patience for the bay to reopen so they can return to their calling.

“I would like to see the working waterfront culture sustained in this area, but we can't have a sustainable fishery without a healthy ecosystem,” Brooke said. “I would like to see some of those areas just left alone so that they can create an ecosystem. When you bring back the foundations, then other things will follow.”