Restore Our Shores Oyster Gardening and Living Shorelines in Melbourne, Florida

Lagoon-front volunteers in Brevard County are trained to grow juvenile oysters off their docks for about six to nine months, then return them to Brevard Zoo for planting on Indian River Lagoon restoration reefs.

Oyster gardening is a volunteer program run by Brevard Zoo in Melbourne, through its nonprofit East Coast Zoological Foundation, that turns private docks along the Indian River Lagoon into oyster nurseries. According to the program's oyster gardening page, lagoon-front residents attend a workshop, collect shells covered in juvenile oysters, called spat, and hang them off their docks and pilings in cages for approximately six to nine months. The gardeners clean and care for the cages, and the grown oysters are then returned at a homecoming event and planted on restoration reefs.

The data from each dock does double duty. The program states that measurements from gardeners' oysters point the zoo team to the best locations for new reefs, and that the project has grown over 500,000 live oysters. Brevard Zoo lists its address as 8225 North Wickham Road in Melbourne.

An oyster gardener needs a Brevard County dock on the brackish Indian River Lagoon, or an HOA community dock, plus one to two hours a week and the ability to lift 30 pounds.

The program sets a short list of requirements. A volunteer needs a dock on the Indian River Lagoon in Brevard County, or membership in an HOA community with a shared dock. Oysters need the brackish water of the lagoon, so docks on freshwater lakes, ponds, rivers and creeks do not qualify, and a dock on an inland Melbourne lake cannot host a garden. Gardeners commit one to two hours a week to maintaining the habitats, must be able to lift 30 pounds, and should not be out of town for more than two weeks during the gardening season, which runs from fall to summer.

Each new Brevard County gardener receives roughly 35 to 60 oyster shells, with anywhere from none to 30 or 40 spat on each, and splits them between two cages. People without a dock can still take part: the program trains them as Oyster Buddies, who temporarily fill in for one to two hours a week maintaining habitats, need reliable transportation and must be able to lift 40 pounds. Gardeners who skipped recent seasons sign up as returning gardeners, and residents whose homes are not selected are invited to become Oyster Buddies or join other conservation programs.

The grown oysters go onto coquina reefs that the Brevard Zoo team builds in the Indian River Lagoon, which totaled 170,000 square feet of oyster reef as of 2026, according to the program.

The Brevard Zoo program's reef page describes a design built from coquina, a limestone rock made from compressed shell and coral, laid as a perimeter based on the permitted footprint, then filled with fossilized shell and topped with recycled shell, with live oysters added in areas deemed necessary based on natural recruitment.

The pace has grown each year. In 2023 the team built 18 reefs in the north basin of the lagoon, about 13,700 square feet, and completed its first coquina reef, which the zoo reported eliminated manmade material from its projects. The 2024 season wrap-up reported just over 27,000 square feet and the program's 100th oyster reef, and quoted Senior Conservation Manager Olivia Escandell saying the team was seeing more and more natural recruitment of wild oysters in the Melbourne area, after several years of concentrated building in that part of the lagoon.

In 2025 the team built just over 52,000 square feet of reef, nearly double the year before, using a full-time construction team and its own barge, according to Brevard Zoo. The same year it seeded about 12,000 live oysters onto new reefs and received the Florida Nature Conservation Award from the Florida Association of Zoos and Aquariums for its oyster work.

A living shoreline is a nature-based alternative to seawalls, bulkheads and rock revetments that the Brevard Zoo lagoon program promotes for the Indian River Lagoon.

The Brevard Zoo program's living shoreline page defines a living shoreline as a nature-based approach to shoreline protection, used instead of hardened structures such as seawalls, bulkheads and rock revetments. It is built with vegetation, marsh, oyster reefs and other organic features to control erosion, reduce wave energy, improve water quality and filter pollutants. Components can include aquatic vegetation, oyster reefs, sand and stone.

The program places living shorelines alongside related work on mangroves, seagrass, clams and native-plant buffer zones between lagoon yards and the water. Its seagrass is grown in two nurseries, one in Rockledge and one at the Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute in Melbourne Beach, which marked a full year of operation in fall 2024 according to the zoo's 2024 season report.

Florida Tech students and the university's Indian River Lagoon Research Institute built shell-covered oyster mats for lagoon restoration in 2012 and 2017, according to university news posts.

Oyster work in Melbourne predates the current reef program. A Florida Tech blog post dated December 9, 2012 reported that Brevard Zoo and volunteers had replaced over 28,000 oyster mats and restored about 50 reefs in the lagoon, and that the campus Tri Beta chapter dedicated one meeting per academic year to the mats, producing 20 to 30 at a meeting depending on attendance. Each mat used 36 oyster shells, a piece of aquaculture-grade mesh and zip ties.

Florida Tech ran its own program as well. In April 2017, Florida Institute of Technology's Indian River Lagoon Research Institute invited the public to an Earth Day oyster mat workshop on the lawn of the Link Building on the Florida Tech campus, from 2 to 6 p.m. on April 21. Those mats went to the Living Docks program, which hangs shell-covered mats from dock pilings so oysters, sponges, barnacles and tunicates settle there. The university stated that healthy adult oysters can filter 50 gallons of water per day.

The shell comes from restaurants, seafood festivals and shellfish distributors through Shuck and Share, and Brevard County funds oyster gardening supplies and the oyster reef builds.

Through Shuck and Share, restaurants, seafood festivals and shellfish distributors set aside discarded shells, and the program reports collecting around 8 million pounds of shell to date for gardening and reef building. Brevard County is the main public funder: the partners page says the Brevard County Natural Resources Management Department and the County Commissioners fund supplies for hundreds of oyster gardeners, while the St. Johns River Water Management District supports oyster mat work through sales of its lagoon license plate, known as the snook tag. Zoo reports from 2023 and 2024 credit Brevard County's lagoon project plan, known as SOIRL, which the 2023 post says works in partnership with Brevard County Natural Resources, with funding the oyster reefs.

Research now runs alongside construction. A study funded by a Restore America's Estuaries grant with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency money collects ten oysters each month from four sites across Brevard County to examine spat settlement and oyster reproductive health, because the zoo team has seen a lack of consistent spawning in the Brevard part of the lagoon. The zoo says the study also supports Brevard County's plan to construct 14.5 acres of oyster reef.

Last verified: October 15, 2026, by rereading the Brevard Zoo lagoon program's gardening, reef, living shoreline, Shuck and Share and partner pages, four Brevard Zoo news posts and two Florida Tech news archive posts.