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Through USF’s Honors Course: Art & The Environment. We were tasked with designing oyster bricks that would mitigate declining oyster populations within St. Petersburg and involve the local elementary and middle schools.
Each oyster brick design is made up of 3 key aspects. The base, brick and propagation brick. Both designs utilize an interlocking base with textured bottoms that will prevent sinking. Rods will come up from the base, with each brick being stacked onto the rod in a sliding fashion. Within both brick designs, propagation bricks will serve as points for attracting oyster attachment and growth. The importance of the propagation brick is it takes advantage of oyster’s natural inclination to proliferate where previous oysters had proliferated before. Therefore propagation bricks will have oyster shells plastered onto the outside to attract oyster larvae to the structure.
Declining oyster populations are detrimental to many ecosystems since they serve as nature’s water filtration system, food for native animals and provide defense and stabilization to shorelines. Wild capture of oysters comes mostly from 5 regions on the East and Gulf Coast of North America, representing 75% of global oyster farming (Oyster Reefs at Risk and Recommendations for Conservation, Restoration, and Management). Addressing declining oyster populations is important when, as of 2022, only 2 countries in the world (Belgium and Germany) have achieved 3 out of the 4 targets set out by United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 14: Life Below Water (To what degree have we achieved the 2020 targets for our oceans?).
