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Living Shorelines – Great for Fish and Fishing
Author: David Yozzo, Ph.D.
Here at Great Ecology, we often hear about (and promote) the myriad benefits of living shorelines in providing a buffer for storm surges and wave energy, and “softening” the edge at the land-water interface, typically in urbanized settings. Living shorelines achieve these design objectives through integration of traditional engineered structures with vegetation and other “soft” biotic features to provide sustainable solutions to shoreline habitat development, while at the same time, promoting and enhancing ecological goods and services, including water quality enhancement, carbon storage, and local biodiversity maintenance.
Living shorelines also provide important forage and refuge habitat for a variety of coastal resource species, including some that support recreational and commercial fisheries. For example, within New York City’s coastal environment, species likely to occur in the vicinity of living shorelines (and expected to benefit from them) include juvenile striped bass, bluefish, flounder, sea bass, scup and many other species of interest to recreational anglers. Marine and estuarine invertebrates, including blue crabs, American lobster, and shrimp also benefit from living shorelines, especially when combinations of varied hard substrates and vegetation are incorporated, forming a habitat mosaic. Living shorelines that include oyster reefs, built using shell mounds, or through natural oyster colonization of reef balls, oyster castles, or similar habitat elements are recognized for their biodiversity, supporting sea anemones, barnacles, sponges, tunicates, shrimp, mud crabs, and reef-dwelling fish such as gobies and blennies. Finally, the shallow grades along the seaward edge of living shorelines create a transition to deeper open waters (vs. the abrupt boundary of a seawall or a revetment structure), facilitating exchange of materials and energy from coastal/terrestrial to estuarine/marine environments. A gentle grade to shallow water depth provides a refuge for forage species and early life stages of fish seeking to avoid predators.
Because living shorelines function within an optimal position within the tidal prism, or the elevation limits that determine the frequency and duration of tidal inundation (a.k.a “the hydroperiod”), they must be constructed at elevations dictated by present-day tidal datums; however, as sea level rise increases along our coastlines, tidal elevation ranges that are presently optimal for marsh vegetation development will become sub-optimal in the coming decades. In other words, wetland plants will drown and intertidal habitat features such as oyster and mussel beds will also be inundated to a greater extent than specified in their original designs. Although this system state change impacts the longevity and integrity of the plantings associated with living shorelines, the resulting shallow water habitat, inundated more frequently than originally specified by the end of its design life, benefits fish/macrofauna in shallow estuarine/marine waters. Forage species and early life stages of migratory and estuarine-dependent fish and invertebrates make use of sinuous, channelized micro-habitats which form along eroding marsh edges. These microhabitats are especially attractive to fish/macrofauna when adjacent to or within a matrix of both vegetation and structures such as oyster reefs or artificial hard substrate (e.g. reef balls, rocky shorelines).
To date, Great Ecology’s work on living shorelines, primarily in the NY-NJ Harbor Estuary, includes all aspects of project development and implementation, including planning, design, monitoring, and regulatory/permitting tasks. These projects showcase our staff’s capabilities and expertise, and have included input from restoration ecologists, wetlands scientists, designers and permitting specialists. Representative project examples include Bayswater Point State Park and West Pond in Jamaica Bay; Sherman Creek Inlet, along the Harlem River in upper Manhattan; and Brooklyn Bridge Park, located along the East River. Specific design objectives and habitat features intended to benefit fish and macrofauna (as well as anglers) on these projects include:
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Oyster shells in coir fabric bags;
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Intertidal low marsh plantings;
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Sandy/silty shallow subtidal habitat;
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Sinuous tidal channel networks;
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Reef balls, “rubble rooms,” and other artificial structures;
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Relict pile fields; and
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Fishing piers, walkways, and public access points.
