Thank you volunteers!
Good Morning!
On Wednesday August 12th, 17 volunteers donated their time and labor to filling oyster bags for the reef structures being placed at The City of Gulf Breeze Deadman’s Island this week. Our partners and stewards such as FLDEP Coastal Aquatic Managed Areas, Gulf Power, Emerald Coastkeepers, The Nature Conservancy, local fisherman, students and supportive residents gave a helping hand to help save Deadman’s Island from further erosion. The day was extremely hot and hardly any wind but that did not deter these hard wrokers from helping to achieve the the goal of filling 156 structures. A total of 30 structures were filled that day.
These structures will be placed aproximately 240′ away from the shoreline of Deadman’s Island underwater to slow down the wave action and to allow the island to slowly stabilize and prevent historic structures, unmarked cemetaries, 100 year old Marine Oak and the 10,000 year old salt marsh from being destroyed. These volunteers understand the importance of preserving a rare jewel found no where else in the US. This project will allow grand kids and great grandkids to enjoy the beauty and uniqueness Deadman’s Island has given their parents, grand parent, great parent and great grandparent and visitors in the past.
The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation shell habitat grant, US Fish and Wildlife and the Five Star grant (Southern Company, NFWF, NaCO, EPA, and the Wildlife Habitat Council) has given the funding needed to achieve progress with our oyster breakwater structures. The NFWF grant provided the lunch of Subway sandwiches, water and Gatorade to our hardworking volunteers who by the way did not stop at 12pm they kept on working.
Georgestone Technical School and Escambia County Road Prison, as part of the Trade program, welded these structures and did an amazing job! Materials for the structures and design of a majority of the structures were provided by Coastal Environments Inc.
Thank you to all our supporters! A special thanks to the City of Gulf Breeze Personnel, Therran Gentry and his crew and Ric Moore for diligently working above and beyond duty to get these structures deployed by next week’s high tide. Please see the great article showing our volunteers from Sean Dugas of the Pensacola News Journal.
http://www.pnj.com/article/20090812/NEWS01/90812013&referrer=FRONTPAGECAROUSEL
Heather Reed, Project Manager, Ecological Consulting Services Inc.