Cal State Fullerton marine biologist Danielle Zacherl is teaming up with collaborators from Orange County Coastkeeper and Cal State Long Beach to restore native Olympia oyster habitats and eroding Southern California shorelines with nonnative oyster shells discarded by area restaurants.
For the past 20 years, Zacherl, her students and collaborators have researched ways to restore the dwindling population and habitat of Olympia oysters, the only oyster native to the West Coast. Zacherl’s research focuses on restoring Olympia oyster beds and using living plants and animals to stabilize eroding coastal areas, a technique known as living shorelines.
“Due to a combination of overharvesting, pollution from paper pulp mills and extensive coastal bay development, the species has suffered significant losses since the early 1900s,” said Zacherl, Cal State Fullerton professor of biological science.
Zacherl came up with the idea to adapt an East Coast method of deploying strings of dead oyster shells off public and private docks during the Olympia oyster’s reproductive season. Locally produced oyster larvae settle on the shells, which are later harvested and placed onto the restored bed to jump-start the native population.
Zacherl’s former student Kaysha Kenney, marine restoration director at Orange County Coastkeeper, scaled up the effort. Kenney, who earned her bachelor’s degree in biological science with a focus on marine biology in 2019, launched “Shells for Shorelines,” a program that recycles restaurant oyster shells. The program has since expanded to bays in Seal Beach, Newport Beach and Long Beach.
“Instead of buying oyster shells from aquafarms, the program intercepts shells from restaurants that are bound for the landfill,” Zacherl said.
Kenney said the program partners with 10 restaurants in Orange County and Long Beach. Since the program started in June 2024, over 14,000 pounds of oyster shells have been recycled. The project aims to address coastal erosion at three locations within the Seal Beach National Wildlife Refuge and Anaheim Bay.
“This initiative helps reduce food waste, lower program costs and engage the local community in marine science projects,” said Kenney, who holds a master’s degree in marine biology from James Cook University in Australia.
Five CSUF graduate student researchers, two undergraduate researchers and a postgraduate research technician, as well as Christine Whitcraft, professor and wetlands ecologist at Cal State Long Beach, are contributing to the project.
The collaborative research team has received over $700,000 in funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s National Coastal Resilience Fund for the living shorelines and oyster shell recycling programs. Of the funding, CSUF received $137,806 from Orange County Coastkeeper for the work being conducted by Zacherl and her students.