Jeff Grimshaw’s family has owned a waterfront property in Virginia Beach for more than three decades, jutting out where the Lynnhaven Bay meets the river of the same name.
Over that time “we’ve seen tremendous change,” Grimshaw said. “We are losing land at a pretty horrific rate.”
Erosion exacerbated by storms and sea level rise has eaten away at the property’s edge, particularly in the last 20 years, he said.
Now Grimshaw’s property will serve as a test site for a new kind of shoreline.
Using a $15,000 state grant, the nonprofit Lynnhaven River Now is building a living shoreline made of mussels.
Living shorelines are built using natural materials like rocks, sand and plants. They’re used in place of armored shorelines – manmade structures like bulkheads or riprap.
The concept is not new to Virginia. The state now actually requires living shorelines be used whenever possible, citing their benefits to wildlife habitat and water quality. A recent study by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science found marshes and living shorelines in the Middle Peninsula region generate more than three times as much economic value to recreational fishing as armored shorelines.
Environmentalists often successfully use oyster shells for these projects. So why switch to mussels?
Baby oysters need to attach to hard surfaces to grow. But mussels can attach to soft ones, like mudflats and grasses, said Vince Bowhers, restoration coordinator for Lynnhaven River Now.
“So it gives us another option,” he said. “Because one thing we don’t have a lot of left anymore in the waterway is hard surfaces.”
The nonprofit is in the early stages of building the mussel project on three different areas of Grimshaw’s property, using volunteers including the Boy Scouts.
The base of the shoreline is 10-foot-long logs made of coconut fiber. The group will then put holes in the logs and insert mussels – as many as they can get their hands on, collected from local oyster cages.
They also planted vegetation like black needlerush and cordgrass.
The local ribbed mussels they’re using aren’t the kind you’d eat at a local restaurant.
“They don't taste very good,” said Brent James, oyster restoration coordinator who’s “also becoming Mr. Mussel.”
The strategy’s been used in Delaware with mixed success, James said. Challenges include pesky predators getting into the shoreline, like raccoons and geese.
To ward against that, Lynnhaven River Now will put up some chicken wire and goose exclusion fences, as well as planting grasses deeper into the ground so they’re harder to pull out.
The Lynnhaven site is particularly vulnerable to erosion because of boat wakes and strong winds blowing in waves from multiple directions. The goal of the new shoreline is to help absorb some of that wave energy.
Mussels already naturally line local marsh islands, Bowhers said.
“They've been around for a long time, and they've withstood many a storm,” he said. “So what we're trying to do is mimic that here.”
The nonprofit will study the site for at least three years, adding mussels along the way.
