The St. Lucie County Board of County Commissioners honored Teen Anglers' Treasure Coast Chapter with a proclamation recognizing their contribution to Indian River ecosystem projects, on January 5th, 2010 in the commission chambers in Ft. Pierce Florida.

The Treasure Coast chapter worked throughout the 2009 season to help the Indian River deal with upstream pollution from stormwater run-off by bagging and deploying oyster shells. In April last year, Teen Anglers launched their efforts by bagging an impressive 2 tons of oyster shells in one hour to help restore St.Lucie inshore reefs. They then continued to help carry the bags to the reef restoration sites and continue collecting and bagging shell.

The process of collecting oyster shell, bagging it and deploying it at designated sites in the Indian River Lagoon has been orchestrated by Jim Oppenborn, St Lucie County's Marine Resource Coordinator. Jim has been highly successful in his mission to restore historic oyster reefs because of his ability to engage public and private groups and businesses. Recognized for Excellence in Habitat Restoration in 2009 by the Snook Foundation, Jim humbly noted, "i just listen to what the public wants - I couldn't do any of this without the participation of individuals and groups."

Oyster reefs create habitat for creatures such as crabs, shrimp, invertebrates by the score and a myriad of forage fishes. They provide a ready food source for gamefish such as snook, trout, tripletail, macks and jacks. These underwater grocery stores also provide nursery habitat for many of the species of juvenile fishes such as snapper and grouper that grow up and migrate to offshore reefs.

Oysters are filter feeders and they improve water quality. Restoring oyster reefs in the Indian River and St. Lucie is an ongoing project coordinated by Jim and we salute Teen Anglers for taking part. We thank Jim for his leadership and for his effective works toward Indian River restoration.

McCulley Marine Services has been of great help with the bagging projects as well as deployment. Providing a front end loader to transfer approximately 2 tons of shell onto a module construction table, bringing the work area up to waist height was just one of their contributions.

Special thanks also goes to the St. Lucie County Erosion District for purchasing the bagging material.

Teen Angler coordinator Cammie Ward, and founder Al Bernetti organized the group of teens who are motivated to establish inshore and offshore reefs as fish habitat.

Thanks to the Teen Anglers (and parents) for helping with the project.

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