Excerpt:
Volunteers have been busy building up natural seawalls on one of the spoil islands in the middle of the bay. They’re helping restore part of one of the most important rookeries in the state.
It’s barely 50 degrees, a blistering north wind is howling and Rick Radigan is all smiles as he gives instructions to volunteers on how to build oyster beds in the middle of chilly Hillsborough Bay.
“We’re going to lift the bags out and we’re gonna start passing them on from one person to another,” Radigan shouts over the hum of his boat. “We should be, given the topography of the island, we should be able to get pretty close, but hopefully we’ll be able to stay as dry as possible and as warm as possible.”
Radigan is with the nonprofit environmental group Tampa Bay Watch. He cranks up the engine on the small skiff, which is loaded with bags of oyster shells.
Freezing salt spray heralds our journey from the mouth of the Alafia River, as we head to Fantasy Island.
No, not that Fantasy Island, as fans of the 1970s TV show may remember.
This Fantasy Island was created in the 1970s as a deep channel was dredged for Tampa’s port. It came into existence about the same time as its other interestingly named neighbors, Beer Can Island and 2D and 3D islands.
They’ve become important rookeries for wading birds, like white ibis, little blue herons and rare reddish egrets.
Volunteers are on this 2-acre speck in the bay this chilly morning to plant oyster reef balls. They’re made up of shells collected from area restaurants. Living oysters can attach their young to them and become living reefs. They provide a barrier to deflect waves kicked up from huge freighters and cruise ships passing by.
Those waves can erode the shorelines.
The restoration cost about $200,000 and is being funded by the nonprofit Coastal Conservation Association Florida, Port Tampa Bay, Duke Energy and Neptune Flood Insurance of St. Petersburg.
This is the second phase of a restoration effort that began in 2016. Back then, Tampa Bay Watch volunteers noticed extreme erosion on the southern end, facing the shipping channel.
“That is a big ship displacing a huge volume of water in an area that is supposed to be a bay with low energy with tidal flats and things like that,” Plage said, “so that energy greatly affects those shorelines or the constant kind of smashing against them and things like this…”
