Oyster Habitat Production During The Early Holocene

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-15-2026

School

Ocean Science and Engineering

Abstract

Oysters produce critical biogenic habitat in estuaries and have throughout their evolutionary history. Early Holocene coastal environments experienced rapid rates of relative sea level rise, which dramatically shifted the physical footprint of estuaries and intertidal habitat for sessile species. The study objectives were to: 1) describe the distribution and density of fossil oyster shell on the mid-Atlantic continental shelf; 2) identify time since death; 3) construct an age-length-shell weight relationship; and from these 4) simulate population dynamics and habitat production for an early Holocene oyster reef. We conducted dredge surveys on the mid-Atlantic continental shelf and collected 859 fossil oyster shells and shell fragments. Selected shells were radiocarbon dated to 11,072 to 8472 cal yr BP. Using preserved material, we established an age-length-weight relationship to calculate the average shell weight (g) for a given age at death. We simulated early Holocene oyster populations under 300 scenarios, which included three recruitment levels (high, medium, low) and 100 natural mortality levels ranging from ∼10 to 50% mortality yr−1 (M = 0.1 to 0.7). Simulated oyster populations were more resilient to relative sea level rise under high recruitment and low natural mortality scenarios. High recruitment and low natural mortality enabled oyster populations to maintain higher mean population size (# m−2), mean population biomass (g m−2), mean annual carbonate production (g m−2 yr−1) from growth of living oysters, and mean annual gross reef accretion (g m−2 yr−1 and mm yr−1) from mortality, which was critical for reefs to accrete rapidly to match relative sea level rise.

Publication Title

Palaeogeography Palaeoclimatology Palaeoecology

Volume

692

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