Adventure at South Oro Bay

by Susannah Prenoveau | June 7, 2021

While stepping carefully and sinking down into the clay substrate along the shoreline, we looked out over the waters of South Oro Bay at Anderson Island. It was a little after noon on Friday, May 14th and my friend and I were tasked with deploying three dowels adorned with a stack of pacific oyster shells and water-resistant flags with the word “ORO” written on them.

Why were we doing that, you ask? Well, it’s all part of the Puget Sound Restoration Fund (PSRF) Olympia Oyster Recruitment Monitoring project which began in 2014.  According to the PSRF website, the juvenile Olympia oysters that we are searching for in South Oro Bay are oyster larvae that settle onto a hard surface in tidal areas – such as a rock or an adult oyster – and grow into adult members of the population.

As soon as we started looking for the best spot to place our oyster recruitment stations (the dowels with oyster shells attached), we noticed lots of fully grown, live oysters on the beach, but we quickly realized that they were not the type of oysters we were looking to recruit. They were Pacific oysters, which are the most common, non-native oyster cultivated here in Washington.

As a part of efforts to restore Puget Sound, PSRF is seeking to recruit and cultivate Olympia oysters.  The Nature Conservancy (TNC) article, “Hope on the Half Shell,” explains that the Olympia oyster is the only oyster native to Washington and to the entire West coast of North America. These oysters are now scarce here in the PNW, so it’s not surprising that the only ones we could find on the shores of South Oro Bay were the non-native, Pacific oysters. These were originally imported from the east coast and Japan.

The Land Trust’s involvement in this project began in 2019, when our contacts at the US Fish and Wildlife Service visited our newly acquired South Oro Bay property and suggested we get in touch with PSRF to find out if the site might be a good spot for Olympia oysters. Now we are gathering data to find out if any natural Olympia oyster larvae are found in the waters of South Oro Bay. This is our second year participating in the monitoring project, and unfortunately, last year, our monitoring station didn’t collect any juvenile Olympia oysters. However, it can take some time to figure out the correct beach elevation for the monitoring station, so we are giving it another try this year.

The deployment stations for this project are  set out in early summer when Olympia oysters begin to spawn, and we’ll go back out to collect them in early fall. If you have knowledge about oyster recruitment and restoration and/or would like to volunteer to help us with this project in the future, please don’t hesitate to reach out to

Reestablishing Olympia Oyster Populations in Puget Sound, Puget Sound Restoration Fund