Completion of Project GreenShores

For the past five years, Northwest Florida Aquatic Preserve has been working on a grant funded by Deepwater Horizon Program’s Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) to add additional plantings of native vegetation to the islands at Project GreenShores II, place informational signage, remove invasive species and debris, and conduct monitoring.  

Project GreenShores Site II was originally built in 2009 with submerged breakwaters. After seeing the success of Site I which has emergent breakwaters and a series of islands, NRDA implemented a third phase of the project by turning the submerged reefs into emergent reefs and added in islands using dredged material. This project restored approximately 12.8 acres of salt marsh and oyster reef habitat.

Over the course of the project NWFLAP staff has planted a total of 22,829 plants at this site, all of which were grown at our native plant nursery. Over 160 volunteers have helped either propagate or plant for this phase of the project over the past few years. A huge partner in helping our office grow and install all these plants was our local Oyster Corps/ Gulf Corps crew.

In addition to plantings, another task was to maintain the site free of invasive species and marine debris. To date we have removed a total of 2,186.5 square feet of invasive and nuisance plants from the shoreline and on the islands. These efforts helped meet performance criteria for the project. A total of 1,254.2 pounds of trash has also been removed by our staff and volunteers. 

With the planting portion of the project completed, we are now conducting the final monitoring efforts and will be installing a large educational wayside sign for pedestrians and visitors to learn more about the project. 

This project is a staff favorite and a well-known site in our community. We have enjoyed contributing to a large-scale restoration project so close to the heart of downtown Pensacola, and plan to continue management and oversight through the new year.