Oysters are a filter feeding species of bivalve that have been known to have significant positive contributions to water quality. Over many years, populations of Eastern oysters have been decimated due to factors such as habitat loss, pollution, over-harvesting, changing environmental conditions, and other human impacts. Oyster restoration projects such as the Oyster Sanctuary Program in North Carolina aim to rebuild oyster populations through artificial reefs. According to the NC Division of Marine Fisheries, the Oyster Sanctuary Program encompassed an estimated 788 acres as of September 2023. Previous investigations of the impacts of oyster restoration have found that large-scale restoration efforts have positively contributed to water quality and that these changes are detectable by remote sensing. However, these studies have primarily focused on oyster reefs in the Chesapeake Bay, and water quality impacts in North Carolina have not been investigated at this scale. This project aims to investigate the water quality impacts of subtidal oyster restoration in the Pamlico Sound in Eastern North Carolina, including changes to water quality improvement speed following natural disasters such as hurricanes.
Using imagery from the NASA Aqua satellite and the onboard Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), we intend to analyze changes in Total Suspended Matter (TSM) at n = 6 sites in the Oyster Sanctuary Program as well as control sites which have not been restored. The chosen restored sites are fully encompassed by the archival imagery and data available, with the earliest TSM measurements available from 2012, the earliest restoration beginning in 2013, and the latest restoration ending in 2022. This remotely sensed information will be utilized alongside survey data from NC Division of Marine Fisheries’ annual survey of all sites in the Oyster Sanctuary Program network. This will allow an analysis of restoration impact by acreage, density, and by materials used for artificial reef construction. By evaluating these factors, we will investigate differences in water quality impact based on restoration methods, siting, and sanctuary size.