MADEIRA BEACH, Fla. \u2014 Madeira Beach will host a vertical oyster garden (VOG) workshop and giveaway Saturday at Patriot Park to help improve the water quality in Boca Ciega Bay.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are the first beach community to do this,\u201d said Mayor Anne-Marie Brooks. \u201cI’m excited to be the leader within our county to get this going for other cities to jump on board as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
The city has partnered with the University of Florida IFAS Extension and Pinellas County for the workshop, which is scheduled from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. at the park located at 424 150th Ave.<\/p>\n
The goal is to help increase the oyster population in the Bay, which has declined 85 percent over the years because of overharvesting, according to Natural Resources Agent Lara Milligan.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce you kind of overexploited a resource, it just takes a really long time to come back,\u201d she said. \u201cThe oyster themselves not only support baby oysters, but things like sponges and crabs will grow on here, which then attract things like fish. So it just it’s this kind of ripple effect of supporting the overall ecosystem.\u201d<\/p>\n
Milligan will show participants how to build the vertical oyster gardens, which consist of 12 recycled shells from local restaurants stacked on a wire.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis basically creates a little micro habitat for babies to then grow onto them. They need a hard surface in order to grow,\u201d she said. \u201cOnce they’re stuck, they’re stuck there forever. And so this becomes literally a little mini living reef.\u201d<\/p>\n
The city has enough shells to make 200 VOGs, which will be hung beneath docks and piers to naturally filter seawater and remove pollutants.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey’re pulling out different particles,\u201d said Milligan. \u201cAnd a lot of the particles that maybe aren’t as great things, like sediments that might get into the water. I think sand and runoff from the roads, pollution, any excess nutrients. We hear a lot about fertilizer getting into the water. So they’re helping to pull all of that out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brooks said cleaner water supports seagrass, fish and overall Bay health. She hopes many residents show up for the event and hang the vertical oyster gardens from their private docks.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s things like this that help improve that water quality,\u201d the mayor said. \u201cSo we should all want to support this and do more and more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brooks said she got the idea for the program from Pinellas County Commissioner Kathleen Peters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MADEIRA BEACH, Fla. \u2014 Madeira Beach will host a vertical oyster garden (VOG) workshop and giveaway Saturday at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":409671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[767,16485,770,1563,2968,115,596,202,204,203,199,201,200,135],"class_list":["post-409670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-app-community","tag-app-environment","tag-community-news","tag-environment","tag-josh-rojas","tag-news","tag-pinellas-county","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-tampa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}