Thoughts about my visit to the Woodard Bay native oyster restoration site, April 19, 2007

Report by Betsy Lyons

Oh, no not again... Just when I was starting to feel like I had the hang of “walking on water” and was priding myself on being “light on my toes,” down I went  into the mud. My right leg was knee-deep in mud, my left a pace ahead and partially stuck, leaving me in quite and awkward position and about to fall face first. The only thing that saved me was the clip board in my hand that I used as a prop to push myself up.

As I got up and looked around to see if anyone had seen my less-than-elegant mud hop, I spied Carri, who works for The Nature Conservancy in the South Puget Sound area, struggling to get her own leg unstuck. No matter how much she pulled and wiggled, it was apparent that her boot and foot simply weren’t coming out of the mud together.  “Who needs boots anyway?” Carri jokingly remarked – then opted to go bootless and work in socks the rest of the day.

Who could complain, though? Here we were in the middle of one of South Puget Sound’s most beautiful natural areas on a sunny spring day, with a group of fantastic volunteers, all looking for native oysters as part of our spring monitoring at Woodard Bay. Last summer we did a pilot oyster restoration project at the site, in preparation of a larger restoration this year. We were looking for surviving oysters in experimental plots and conducting an oyster census of the remnant oyster population that was discovered there. Once we started to find live oysters, everyone's enthusiasm climbed and we were reminded of why were there – and what a joy it was to be engaged in this effort. It sure beats sitting in front of a computer!
 
Maybe next time I won’t get stuck. Muddy or not, here I come!

At Woodard Bay we’re monitoring native Olympia oysters, counting how many show up in certain spots on the beach.” Photo TNC Staff - Check out the photo album