Chesapeake Quarterly : Volume 24 Number 1 : Restoration Takes Root: Living Shorelines for Changing Coasts

Restoration Takes Root: Living Shorelines for Changing Coasts

June 2025 • Volume 24 Number 1

Roots at the Water’s Edge

By Ashley Goetz

As erosion threatens treasured places around the Chesapeake Bay, communities are turning to nature-based solutions. Explore how living shorelines are helping to protect coasts and heritage on opposite shores of the Bay.

Seeding Shorelines

By Madeleine Jepsen

Living shoreline plants have a tough job: they must hold down the sandy shoreline with their roots and ease waves with their stems, all while surviving salty water. 

 

Designing with Nature

By Madeleine Jepsen

Researchers are on a mission to determine which key components make a living shoreline successful at preventing erosion—but first they must gather crucial data. 

 

Living Rocks for Living Shorelines

By Madeleine Jepsen

Oyster biology is both an obstacle and an opportunity when it comes to living shorelines. Learn how and why oysters are sometimes included in living shoreline projects. 

 

A Marsh Grows in Brooklyn

By Ashley Goetz

A living shoreline is under construction in Baltimore City—part of a sweeping project that aims to restore more than 50 acres of habitat along 11 miles of shoreline. 

 
Cover photo by Logan Bilbrough
Cover photo by Logan Bilbrough

In This Issue

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Video Spotlights

The quality of the video depends on the speed of your connection to the Internet. The length of each video is given in minutes and seconds (mm:ss). We appreciate your comments about each of the videos.

Stan Allan

An Oyster Inventor and His Quest [9:47]
video | comments

Who invents new oysters? Stan Allen does. He not only breeds disease-resistant oysters by speeding up the familiar process of natural selection, but he's also created a new kind of oyster, an oyster nature never designed. His invention is called a triploid oyster. It carries extra chromosomes and in the right conditions, it can grow nearly twice as fast as natural oysters. Widely grown on oyster farms along the west coast and in other countries, the triploid oyster is now coming to the Chesapeake.
Video by Michael Fincham, Maryland Sea Grant.
oyster cage

Growing Oysters to Clean the Bay [3:53]
video | comments

Oyster gardening, growing baby oysters off a dock, keeps growing in popularity among Bay-area residents interested in restoring water quality in Chesapeake Bay. Most of those dockside oysters will end up on sanctuary reefs where they will go to work filtering water at the rate of 50 gallons a day. Maryland residents can now get oysters and gear and training from a number of environmental organizations around the state. Here's how one organization trains and equips new gardeners.
Video by Michael Fincham, Maryland Sea Grant.
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vol. 9, no. 2
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Chesapeake Quarterly : Volume 24 Number 1 : Restoration Takes Root: Living Shorelines for Changing Coasts

Restoration Takes Root: Living Shorelines for Changing Coasts

June 2025 • Volume 24 Number 1

Roots at the Water’s Edge

By Ashley Goetz

As erosion threatens treasured places around the Chesapeake Bay, communities are turning to nature-based solutions. Explore how living shorelines are helping to protect coasts and heritage on opposite shores of the Bay.

Seeding Shorelines

By Madeleine Jepsen

Living shoreline plants have a tough job: they must hold down the sandy shoreline with their roots and ease waves with their stems, all while surviving salty water. 

 

Designing with Nature

By Madeleine Jepsen

Researchers are on a mission to determine which key components make a living shoreline successful at preventing erosion—but first they must gather crucial data. 

 

Living Rocks for Living Shorelines

By Madeleine Jepsen

Oyster biology is both an obstacle and an opportunity when it comes to living shorelines. Learn how and why oysters are sometimes included in living shoreline projects. 

 

A Marsh Grows in Brooklyn

By Ashley Goetz

A living shoreline is under construction in Baltimore City—part of a sweeping project that aims to restore more than 50 acres of habitat along 11 miles of shoreline. 

 
Cover photo by Logan Bilbrough
Cover photo by Logan Bilbrough

In This Issue

Related Links

Maryland Sea Grant
[Maryland Sea Grant] Maryland Sea Grant NOAA
Stay Connected
 
Chesapeake Quarterly is published by Maryland Sea Grant | Privacy Policy | © 2025 Maryland Sea Grant
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Chesapeake Quarterly is published by Maryland Sea Grant | Privacy Policy | © 2025 Maryland Sea Grant