Gentle waves lapped at the feet of Brent James on a recent morning as he trudged through the muck of low tide.
James, oyster restoration coordinator at the nonprofit Lynnhaven River Now, stooped to marsh grasses at the edge of a private shoreline along Lynnhaven Bay, pointing to one sparse area.
“This is what we used to see: no mussels whatsoever,” James said.
He turned to rows of other grass clumps down the sand, teeming with dark shells mixed in with oysters. “Now you see the mussel colonies in just about every plant.”
Just a few years ago, people would be hard-pressed to find mussels around the Lynnhaven River. But James said officials have recently seen an “explosion” of the muddy mollusks.
And they’re growing seemingly without help from humans.
“Nothing’s changed that much, but they’re just now going to town.”
The mussels popping up in the river are not the same kind that diners encounter at a restaurant, which are typically smooth, blue mussels that live on rocks or pilings.
The Chesapeake Bay’s aptly named ribbed mussel, on the other hand, has a ribbed shell and prefers to attach to the roots of marsh grass and burrow in the mud.
That makes them great at stabilizing marshes to prevent erosion, which is particularly important in the face of rising sea levels.
On the shoreline James recently visited, grass fronted with mussels appeared to be stable, while patches without mussels or oysters were retreating inland.
Restoration groups have long focused on rebuilding the oyster population, and with good reason, James said. But the local success of mussels “is a wonderful harbinger for the future.”
Like oysters, ribbed mussels filter nutrients that run off land and cause pollution, such as nitrogen and phosphorus. But they also consume bacteria, which is a step further than oysters, which pass through and excrete bacteria.
Together, the bivalves are powerhouses for cleaning the river. Their recent growth likely reflects improvements in water quality, which then becomes a happily reinforcing cycle, James said.
“They work in conjunction with the oysters. They're like little partners, little cousins that are just doing their thing out here.”
After a recent change by the state health department, more than half of the Lynnhaven River is now healthy enough to harvest shellfish. That’s up from only 1% at the start of the century.
James said environmentalists around the bay are eager to learn more about how to capitalize on the mussel movement.
William & Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science recently began breeding ribbed mussels to boost living shorelines, which try to replicate natural ecosystems.
For some reason, mussels don’t seem to be as successful in these manmade marshes, VIMS researchers previously told WHRO. They’re studying how to change that.
That reflects Lynnhaven River Now’s experience, too. In 2024, the nonprofit planted the region’s first living shoreline made of mussels on a home in Lynnhaven Bay.
It hasn’t fared as well as they hoped, James said. But at the same time, mussels started popping up seemingly everywhere else.
“They’re doing just fine on their own.”
