Living docks have been installed all throughout Indian River County this year, starting back in February.
“A living dock is creating habitat for other things to settle where they might not normally do that. So on a dock piling, for instance, many of them are wrapped in plastic, and in that case you might get some barnacles to settle on them, but not much else,” Melissa Meisenburg said.
That's Melissa Meisenberg, Senior Environmental Specialist for Indian River County Natural Resources. She said the program found its origin at Florida Tech and Melbourne and found its way here.
“We originally wanted to bring the program here to Indian River County by having her wrap some county-owned docks, but some of those docks were already had oyster growing on them because the pilings are in concrete, and we started talking further about the opportunity to expand their program to Indian River County by offering it to residents and community members where they might have a dock,” she said.
Ultimately, a living dock works by slowly inviting more wildlife and building a mini ecosystem.
“The goal is to have oyster settle on the oyster shell because they're attracted to other oyster shells, but also to have lots of other things become associated with the match. So we might see sponges, tunicates. We might see small fish become associated with the match. Definitely we see crabs. Anything that would normally grow or be associated with hard substrate might settle on those mats and begin growing,” she said.
Jumping forward from the first dock installation to now, the county is doing the first round of monitoring.
“That was our very first dock we wrapped, so it was our six-month assessment. We did see some oyster recruitment, which was very exciting, but we didn't see a lot of live oyster left, meaning that what appeared to have happened to the oyster recruitment on there was that they were eaten,” she said. “So things getting on the mat were actually eating the oyster off of it, which isn't a bad thing because it's creating some food for something else.”
When they took a close look at the dock, they found a spectrum of new creatures calling it home.
“We had a lot of small crabs associated with our mats. We had some tubeworms, or what we call polychaetes, associated with our mats. We saw barnacles on them, which we would expect because they're also looking for hard substrate. We saw pretty much everything that FIT has seen, just probably a little bit in different numbers since our project just kicked off six months ago,” she said.
In addition to looking for success metrics, the county is also monitoring potential issues.
“So one of our concerns is whether or not those oyster shell are falling off and then we have plastic zip ties falling off into the water. We don't want that to happen. And whether or not our mats are in their right location,” she said.
Melissa said that monitoring will continue at each site every six months for two years. As of right now, 14 docks have been installed, with nine pending approval and 17 applicants awaiting a visit. Interested candidates can apply online on the county's website.
“Once we come and do our site visit, if it meets the requirements, meaning the pilings are in deep enough water, they aren't covered in oyster already, then our next step is to have them sign a right of entry agreement. This allows us to enter the property, to install the dock, but to also do our monitoring and maintenance. Now, we won't come back out for six months unless there's a problem and the homeowner contacts us and we need to go back out. And we will always schedule with the homeowner in advance to choose a date that is convenient for them and works with their schedule,” she said.