Preliminary Habitat Assessment of Floating Oyster (Crassostrea virginica) Gardens (Delaware)

Community volunteers, known as "oyster gardeners," are growing the eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica) off private docks in coastal lagoons of southeastern Delaware, known locally as "Inland Bays," to aid restoration efforts. Today in Delaware, the oyster gardening program is a fraction of the size of those in neighboring states but has expanded tenfold from its inception in 2003. Oyster aquaculture can provide many of the same services as natural oyster reefs, such as providing a hard substrate for colonization by marine epifauna, which accordingly attracts fishes and mobile invertebrates (e.g., O'Beirn et al. 2004). Many species of economic and ecological importance are considered habitat limited in the Inland Bays, particularly in juvenile refuge and forage areas. Floating oyster gardens can provide additional habitat at small scales while supplementing oyster spawning stocks without difficult and costly types of habitat modifications.