![]() In efforts to regain lost ecosystem services from declining oyster populations, and to bolster harvestable stocks, there have been various methods to anthropogenically restore oyster reefs and abundances. This role in energy dissipation can help abate naturally occurring sources of erosion, such as a storm surge, or anthropogenically derived sources, such as boat wakes. Third, the reefs created by oysters are valuable for energy dissipation within estuarine systems and for protecting coastal wetland habitats from erosion. Second, along with creating a physical structure, the vertical structure of oysters increases sedimentation on the reef by decreasing the water flow over it, enabling vertical growth of the entire reef. While these reef types have functional differences because of tidal dynamics, both are extremely valued, as they concentrate energy in one location and provide habitat for benthic-associated meiofauna, invertebrate macrofauna, and resident and transient fish. This ecologically important habitat is the result of the oyster’s three-dimensional growth after settlement, which provides reefs in either intertidal or subtidal areas that would otherwise be open bottom. First, oysters create a structured habitat within estuarine systems along the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic coast of the United States. The eastern oyster, Crassostrea virginica, is an ecologically important species that provides many different ecosystem services. Therefore, projects creating oyster reefs should consider local and regional landscape factors for the long-term success of oyster populations and robustness to natural disasters. While the created reefs receive limited larval influx due to the narrow opening between Sweetwater Lake and Galveston Bay proper, this limited connectivity seemed to prevent mass mortality from the freshwater influx from Hurricane Harvey. Our results further highlight the importance of reef placement for breakwater-style reefs, as it appears the hydrodynamics within Sweetwater Lake influenced both oyster abundance and size among individual reefs. Oyster abundance and size (shell height) varied interactively by year and reef number, whereas oyster recruitment was significantly lower following Hurricane Harvey and then returned to pre-storm levels. For the three years of the study (2017–2019), we also quantified oyster spat recruitment to the reefs. Over the study period, five different reefs were sampled each summer by removing five bags per reef to determine oyster abundance and size demography. The objective of this study was to determine how oyster population characteristics changed over four years (2016–2019) on five different reefs within Sweetwater Lake, Galveston Bay, Texas, with a secondary objective to examine how oyster populations responded after Hurricane Harvey. This study utilized intertidal reefs constructed with oyster shells recycled from local restaurants to provide oyster settlement substrate, reef-associated faunal habitat, and a barrier to prevent marsh erosion. In response, oyster reefs have been created with many different approaches. Populations of the eastern oyster ( Crassostrea virginica) have been historically declining due to both natural and anthropogenic stressors. ![]()
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