Upper St. Mary’s River Restoration
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Large-scale restoration efforts began in 2021 in the St. Marys River sanctuary. The initial implementation phase of the restoration project was completed in 2022, with a total of 60.2 acres of reef restored.
The reports below are available on the archival webpage
These reports are not ADA compliant.
To obtain any of these reports as an accessible copy, follow the directions on the linked page.
- Blueprint of the restoration plan for the Upper St. Marys River
- St_Marys pre-construction groundtruthing report
- 2021 restoration update
- 2022 restoration update
- 2023 restoration update
- 2024 restoration update
Three-year and six-year monitoring efforts are used to assess the oyster metrics for each reef. The first three-year monitoring has yet to occur.
Upper St. Marys River Restoration Reefs
Below is an interactive map with the restoration reefs in the St. Marys Sanctuary. The legend and layers are located in the upper right-hand corner. You can click on a reef to see more information. The information was last updated in March 2023.
Restoration sites are identified as ‘seed only’ restoration (hatchery-produced spat-on-shell added to naturally existing remnant reefs) or ‘substrate + seed’ restoration (adding reef-building substrate to the reef footprint, followed by planting with hatchery-produced spat-on-shell) or ‘premet’ (sites that already meet the Oyster Metrics target oyster density (50+ oysters per m2) and oyster biomass (50+ grams per m2) and not slated to receive initial restoration).
