Restoring Fantasy Island in Hillsborough Bay, one oyster shell at a time
By Steve Newborn
January 15, 2025 at 5:01 AM EST
Volunteers have been busy building up natural seawalls on one of the spoil islands in the middle of the bay. They're helping restore part of one of the most important rookeries in the state.
It's barely 50 degrees, a blistering north wind is howling and Rick Radigan is all smiles as he gives instructions to volunteers on how to build oyster beds in the middle of chilly Hillsborough Bay.
“We're going to lift the bags out and we're gonna start passing them on from one person to another,” Radigan shouts over the hum of his boat. “We should be, given the topography of the island, we should be able to get pretty close, but hopefully we'll be able to stay as dry as possible and as warm as possible.”
Radigan is with the nonprofit environmental group Tampa Bay Watch. He cranks up the engine on the small skiff, which is loaded with bags of oyster shells.
Freezing salt spray heralds our journey from the mouth of the Alafia River, as we head to Fantasy Island.
No, not that Fantasy Island, as fans of the 1970s TV show may remember.
This Fantasy Island was created in the 1970s as a deep channel was dredged for Tampa's port. It came into existence about the same time as its other interestingly named neighbors, Beer Can Island and 2D and 3D islands.
They’ve become important rookeries for wading birds, like white ibis, little blue herons and rare reddish egrets.
Volunteers are on this 2-acre speck in the bay this chilly morning to plant oyster reef balls. They're made up of shells collected from area restaurants. Living oysters can attach their young to them and become living reefs. They provide a barrier to deflect waves kicked up from huge freighters and cruise ships passing by.
Those waves can erode the shorelines.
Aerial view of Fantasy Island, with the oyster shell beds at the bottom of photo (3699x2524, AR: 1.4655309033280508)
Along for the ride today are volunteers Nate and Heather Schneck of St. Petersburg. The cold? They're from Pennsylvania. So they're used to it.
“(It was) 43 when we woke up,” Nate Schneck said. His wife, Heather said: “Yeah, love it. We've done some beach cleanups before with Treasure Island, but I think this is even more interactive and really fun.”
So why are they out here battling freezing salt spray and cold feet?
Well, it's for the birds.
“We encroach on all these bird islands through development and everything like that, so it's important to preserve what we still have left to make sure they have somewhere to go,” said Eric Plage, who manages the project for Tampa Bay Watch.
Oyster reef balls are submerged off Fantasy Island (1427x797, AR: 1.7904642409033877)
The restoration cost about $200,000 and is being funded by the nonprofit Coastal Conservation Association Florida, Port Tampa Bay, Duke Energy and Neptune Flood Insurance of St. Petersburg.
This is the second phase of a restoration effort that began in 2016. Back then, Tampa Bay Watch volunteers noticed extreme erosion on the southern end, facing the shipping channel.
“That is a big ship displacing a huge volume of water in an area that is supposed to be a bay with low energy with tidal flats and things like that,” Plage said, “so that energy greatly affects those shorelines or the constant kind of smashing against them and things like this.”
Volunteers like the Schnecks spent much of this winter morning shoveling oyster shells into bags that will be placed on the northeast shore of the island. In addition to buffering the island from storm surges and ship wakes, Plage said oysters are prized for filtering water, improving the water quality in the bay.
“We created a whole living shoreline, put that in place, and the reef balls are completely covered in oysters,” he said. “It's a square meter of surface area on one of these reef balls, and they can have on average in square meter of about 1,000 oysters. And if you kind of do some math of like in 2 to 5 gallons of water, up to 50 gallons of water a day for an oyster, that's a lot of water being filtered a day by these things.”
Eric Plage, left, helps haul oyster shell bags onto Fantasy Island (720x540, AR: 1.3333333333333333)
“And then we'll plant the salt marsh grass behind those reef balls, those shell bags, higher up on the shore, but that also creates filtration through that salt marsh habitat,” Plage said. “It allows the mangroves to grow up through it, and you have those different ecosystems running down one of our living shorelines.”
These islands are considered critical for wading birds. Nearby, Audubon's Alafia Banks Sanctuary is one of the biggest rookeries in Florida.
But Plage says putting all your bird eggs in one basket can invite disaster.
“We've had instances in the past since we did that project in 2016, 2017 where a big portion of the white ibis that usually nest on Alafia Banks have come over and just blanketed Fantasy Island with hundreds of thousands of birds on this little speck because of situations that arose on other islands,” he said. “So it's incredibly important to protect these islands out here.”
What they learn out here can be used to help protect a lot of other islands threatened by rising seas in the days to come.
Here's some information about the project from Tampa Bay Watch:
Project Timeline:
The view of downtown Tampa from just off Fantasy Island (653x324, AR: 2.015432098765432)
“We're going to lift the bags out and we're gonna start passing them on from one person to another,” Radigan shouts over the hum of his boat. “We should be, given the topography of the island, we should be able to get pretty close, but hopefully we'll be able to stay as dry as possible and as warm as possible.”
Radigan is with the nonprofit environmental group Tampa Bay Watch. He cranks up the engine on the small skiff, which is loaded with bags of oyster shells.
Freezing salt spray heralds our journey from the mouth of the Alafia River, as we head to Fantasy Island.
No, not that Fantasy Island, as fans of the 1970s TV show may remember.
This Fantasy Island was created in the 1970s as a deep channel was dredged for Tampa's port. It came into existence about the same time as its other interestingly named neighbors, Beer Can Island and 2D and 3D islands.
They’ve become important rookeries for wading birds, like white ibis, little blue herons and rare reddish egrets.
Volunteers are on this 2-acre speck in the bay this chilly morning to plant oyster reef balls. They're made up of shells collected from area restaurants. Living oysters can attach their young to them and become living reefs. They provide a barrier to deflect waves kicked up from huge freighters and cruise ships passing by.
Those waves can erode the shorelines.
Aerial view of Fantasy Island, with the oyster shell beds at the bottom of photo (3699x2524, AR: 1.4655309033280508)
Along for the ride today are volunteers Nate and Heather Schneck of St. Petersburg. The cold? They're from Pennsylvania. So they're used to it.
“(It was) 43 when we woke up,” Nate Schneck said. His wife, Heather said: “Yeah, love it. We've done some beach cleanups before with Treasure Island, but I think this is even more interactive and really fun.”
So why are they out here battling freezing salt spray and cold feet?
Well, it's for the birds.
“We encroach on all these bird islands through development and everything like that, so it's important to preserve what we still have left to make sure they have somewhere to go,” said Eric Plage, who manages the project for Tampa Bay Watch.
Oyster reef balls are submerged off Fantasy Island (1427x797, AR: 1.7904642409033877)
The restoration cost about $200,000 and is being funded by the nonprofit Coastal Conservation Association Florida, Port Tampa Bay, Duke Energy and Neptune Flood Insurance of St. Petersburg.
This is the second phase of a restoration effort that began in 2016. Back then, Tampa Bay Watch volunteers noticed extreme erosion on the southern end, facing the shipping channel.
“That is a big ship displacing a huge volume of water in an area that is supposed to be a bay with low energy with tidal flats and things like that,” Plage said, “so that energy greatly affects those shorelines or the constant kind of smashing against them and things like this.”
Volunteers like the Schnecks spent much of this winter morning shoveling oyster shells into bags that will be placed on the northeast shore of the island. In addition to buffering the island from storm surges and ship wakes, Plage said oysters are prized for filtering water, improving the water quality in the bay.
“We created a whole living shoreline, put that in place, and the reef balls are completely covered in oysters,” he said. “It's a square meter of surface area on one of these reef balls, and they can have on average in square meter of about 1,000 oysters. And if you kind of do some math of like in 2 to 5 gallons of water, up to 50 gallons of water a day for an oyster, that's a lot of water being filtered a day by these things.”
Eric Plage, left, helps haul oyster shell bags onto Fantasy Island (720x540, AR: 1.3333333333333333)
“And then we'll plant the salt marsh grass behind those reef balls, those shell bags, higher up on the shore, but that also creates filtration through that salt marsh habitat,” Plage said. “It allows the mangroves to grow up through it, and you have those different ecosystems running down one of our living shorelines.”
These islands are considered critical for wading birds. Nearby, Audubon's Alafia Banks Sanctuary is one of the biggest rookeries in Florida.
But Plage says putting all your bird eggs in one basket can invite disaster.
“We've had instances in the past since we did that project in 2016, 2017 where a big portion of the white ibis that usually nest on Alafia Banks have come over and just blanketed Fantasy Island with hundreds of thousands of birds on this little speck because of situations that arose on other islands,” he said. “So it's incredibly important to protect these islands out here.”
What they learn out here can be used to help protect a lot of other islands threatened by rising seas in the days to come.
Here's some information about the project from Tampa Bay Watch:
Project Timeline:
- 1970: Fantasy Island is created as part of the Harbor Deepening Project.
- 2004: Tampa Bay Watch conducted a community-based restoration program with the Audubon of Florida, Florida Aquarium, Coastal Conservation Association, Riverview High School and local Boy Scout Troops to create a series of oyster bars along the southeastern shoreline of Fantasy Island.
- 2008: Tampa Bay Watch, in collaboration with the Florida Aquarium, constructed an additional 275’ of new oyster bar along the island’s western shoreline.
- 2017: Tampa Bay Watch, in collaboration with the Florida Aquarium, constructed an additional 700’ feet of new Living Shoreline along the southern shoreline of Fantasy Island.
- 2024: Tampa Bay Watch, in collaboration with Port Tampa Bay, Coastal Conservation Association, Duke Energy, and Neptune Flood Insurance plans to stabilize 500 feet of eroding shoreline by installing 870 oyster reef balls and 60 tons of bagged fossilized shell.
The view of downtown Tampa from just off Fantasy Island (653x324, AR: 2.015432098765432)