The Living Memorial Oyster Reef
The “Living Memorial Oyster Reef” program provides a special way to memorialize a birth, graduation, marriage, death, anniversary, corporation or organization with a permanent environmental asset, a fitting tribute in the Bay for our loved ones.
Adopt A Reef Program
Our “Adopt a Reef” program is funded only through donations or crowd funding campaigns. An example of such campaigns might be for our Saxis Community Partners and our Tangier Island Partners with whom we have been working to aid in the protection of their municipalities from rampant storm surge induced erosion, and sea-level rise.
Living Docks
The under dock 3’x3′ 2-layer mini-reefs are also non-harvestable oyster reefs, based on a scaled down version of the larger LMOR. They are pre-seeded with rapidly reproducing diploid oysters, and are solely dedicated to the perpetual replenishment of the bay’s oyster population for filtration and cleansing of the bay’s waters of toxins and excess nutrients contained in their planktonic food supply. These represent one of the best opportunities for community participation in the VESF.
Community Shorelines Program
Several configurations of LMORs and mini-LMORS may be installed around city docks and warfs to maximize stabilization, reduce erosion, enhance the natural habitat promoting the growth of seagrasses, other benthic fauna and flora, and attract fish. To meet the VESF vision, the reef stabilization platforms must be seeded with diploid oysters and dedicated as non-harvestable living memorials reefs which serve to repopulate the bay with oyster spat. Such dual-use purposing is a remarkable opportunity.
Prime candidates for such demonstration projects are The Town of Saxis, Tangier Island and VESF Long Point Center on the lower Rappahannock River.