Heron's Head Oyster Reefs

SUMMARY

These Oyster Reef Balls, on the southern shore of Heron’s Head Park, are part of the Heron’s Head Park Shoreline Resilience Project – an initiative focuses on enhancing shoreline resilience and conservation.

A total of 60 Oyster Reef Balls were installed and approximately 2,000 lbs of our recycled, bagged oyster shells were placed inside. This is because research tells us that baby, free-swimming oysters prefer to settle on oyster shell substrate when finding their forever home. These large structures are made from ECOncrete, which is an environmentally friendly concrete material. We also work with a company called BESE that provides us with biodegradable, netted bags for the oyster shells. In addition to this, volunteers also installed “Juvenile Fish Habitat Blocks” aka cinder blocks, to the inside of each Oyster Reef Ball using marine epoxy.

This is a project of the Port of San Francisco with funding from Proposition 68 through the Ocean Protection Council, Prop.1 through the California Department of Fish & Wildlife, and the National Wetlands Coastal Conservation Program through the California State Coastal

Shoutout to Dixon Marine for getting these 1,100 pound plus structures in the water!

LOCATION

Start date

Installed July 2022.

IMPACT

This project hopes to increase the health and biodiversity of the India Basin area, as well as protect the shoreline.

volunteer PARticipation

70 volunteers, over the course of two days, prepared and bagged about 2,000 lbs of shell that was then attached to the inside of each reef ball. They also equipped each bag with a special tag that we use to identify each 10lb bag for future oyster monitoring. We're thankful to SCAPE and CLIF Bar for volunteering along with our community members in making this project come to life.