The Living Memorial Oyster Reef (LMOR) is an engineered reef, originally designed by Robert Jensen in 1994. After the original reef rested on the bottom of the Rappahannock River for five years, it was raised and studied by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS), including Dr. Russell Burke (PhD dissertation) now at Christopher Newport University. The results were (at least to any student of biology) fantastic. The reef was indeed alive with shellfish and underwater plants creating a filtered region for a clean habitat zone.

The reef is produced by CP&P in Chesapeake, Virginia made from a special marine concrete mixture, including aragonite (the purest form of calcium carbonate for attracting oysters). Each LMOR is 5 layers over 7’x 7’square totalling over 15000 Lbs and is pre-struck with tens of thousands of reproducing oyster spat, then lowered to a designated oyster sanctuary, never to be harvested.