With help from members of the public, we are hand-removing oyster drills at two study sites in Richardson Bay to see if we can reduce the number of oyster drills to a point where Olympia oysters will be able to survive.

At each site we have set up a 50 meter “treatment” area of the shoreline in which we remove all of the oyster drills we can find! Researchers and volunteer scientists check over and under rocks and in mud, which can make it a messy activity. We plan the removals around the projected low tide—the lower the tide the easier it is to see the oyster drills!

At each site we also have a 50 meter “control” area where we are not removing drills. We use this area to compare drill populations to the “removal” area to see if the removal of oyster drills is helping oyster populations. In the future we hope to plant oysters, mussels, and barnacles on the shorelines to see if we have removed enough oyster drills to keep these native species alive.