Grow Oxygen Estuary

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Grow Oxygen

You've just analyzed a lot of data.

That's raised questions.

How do you help keep adequate levels of dissolved oxygen in the estuary?
How do you help reduce turbidity, a persistent problem in the Long Island Sound?
How do you make the region a hospitable place for birds, fiddler crabs and oyster?

Plants are one answer.

And in an estuary, salt marshes contain the particular types of plants that can help. Marshes generate oxygen and boost dissolved oxygen.

A fiddler crab pokes out a claw from its
home in a restored salt marsh.
© NYC Parks/Natural Resources Group

Their tough root systems can also help hold a river bank in place and prevent erosion. in place and prevent soil from washing into the river and causing the kind of persistent turbidity that makes it hard for life to exist on the benthos, or bottom, of the river or estuary.

By helping to stabilize estuary border zones, salt marshes can prevent too much sediment from entering the river.

The right amount of sedimentation and siltation are important to maintaining the foundation of an estuary. Too much sediment, however, can bury benthic communities-such as oyster reefs--and overwhelm salt marshes and other delicate and important habitats.

Tour the Lafayette Street embankment restoration

What's living in that salt marsh 2 years after planting?

Schools of herring fry jump out of the water near this restored salt marsh. River volunteers like to see that, because they think it means a larger fish is chasing after the fry and making them jump like that.

The larger fish, in turn, attract diving birds, such as the Cormorant which are commonly seen flying over the area of the restored salt marsh.

Animals in all stages of life find food and shelter in the tangle of salt marsh plants, but small fish like the herring fry are important residents because they provide an important source of food to larger fish and birds.

Because salt marsh waters are shallow, smaller fish can hide here from the larger fish that seek them as prey. The marshes afford a varied diet to young fish, which eat creatures that live in the mud, algae and decomposing salt-marsh plants.

#7 Find out if you have salt marsh restoration project or another kind of planting project in your watershed that is designed to boost DO levels in your watershed.