In celebration of Washington Seafood Month, we invited two oyster extraordinaires to share their work on seeding oysters in the Puget Sound. Oysters are a keystone species, creating valuable habitat, filtering the water, and providing an important food source for our local communities and economies.
Dan Mazur, with the Olympia Oyster Seed Planting Project, has been planting oysters in our areas since 2005. The project has planted more than 150,000 oyster seeds around Budd Inlet and surrounding areas, and continues to plant more every year! Dan is an active mountain climber, expedition leader and organizer who also volunteers his time giving back to mountain communities with health care, education, environmental and cultural preservation. You can check out Dan Mazur's work seeding oysters in Olympia here at the Olympia Oyster Seeding Project Facebook page.
Dr. Michael Behrens also joined us to talk about an experimental oyster restoration project he is working on at Penrose Point on the Key Peninsula. Michael is a Professor of Marine Ecology at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, WA. He has worked with environmental education programs in California and Washington, most recently serving various roles with Harbor WildWatch, Pierce County, UW Tacoma and Coastal Conservation Association. Michael's research focuses on the native Olympia Oyster (Ostrea lurida), which has declined throughout its native range. For more information on the restoration of our native oyster, check out the following resources:
You can watch a recording of the meeting on the Washington Surfrider YouTube channel. Subscribe to follow what our Washington chapters are up to!
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c43hDb_LhmQ[/embed]
A Florida native, Liz started her career as a marine biologist, working with sea turtles and commercial fisheries in the Florida Keys and spending her vacation time teaching at Duke University's marine science summer camp. While completing her master's degree in Sustainable Development & Conservation Biology from the University of Maryland, she taught sustainability to undergraduate students while also volunteering as a docent at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum’s Ocean Hall and leading overnight camps at the National Zoo. After graduating, she got hitched and moved out west, where she’s spent several years studying salmon and streams and trying to embrace this thing called elevation. She learned about Surfrider’s programs and campaigns as the Olympia Chapter’s Volunteer Coordinator before being hired on as the Washington Regional Manager. When she’s not supporting our five Washington chapters and three BC chapters in their amazing work, she likes to run on trails, bike around volcanoes, freedive, play frisbee, read in the sun with her chickens, play guitar when no one's around, and make maps. Liz has a special fondness for swamps, cypress trees, and thunderstorms, is recreationally obsessed with ocean sunfish, and will shamelessly eat any unattended leftovers.