Oyster reef habitat restoration within the Chesapeake Bay has as its objectives not only the enhancement of the commercially important oyster stocks, but also the restoration of associated assemblages of organisms and, most importantly, the restoration of ecological functions associated with natural reef communities. Despite our efforts to date, many uncertainties still exist with respect to achieving these restoration goals. These include long-term information on the temporal sequence of community development on new reef substrate, evaluating oyster recruitment patterns (a) across restored reef systems and (b) in relation to resident brood stocks.
In this study we sought to characterize the development of resident assemblages on and transient visitors to a variety of constructed reef bases. This study provided a means with which to examine a variety of inter/intra-system processes by coupling the monitoring of resident reef assemblages with characterizations of the transient assemblages (particularly higher trophic levels) in different reef systems. Models of oyster reef community interactions can be generated by synthesizing oyster population data and trophic information over small (system wide) and large (regional) geographic scales
