Wagonga Inlet's Living Shoreline project wins award for innovation

The project involved removing 400 metres of failing seawall and replacing it with a living shoreline that has a small rock toe and saltmarsh plants.

Heidi Thomson, Eurobodalla Shire Council's natural resource and sustainability coordinator, said the project will provide 3000 square metres of additional saltmarsh and terrestrial habitat for native shorebirds and fish, water quality improvements and climate change resilience.

The radical departure from controlling coastal erosion with traditional rock walls won an award for innovation at the Joint Coast to Coast and NSW Coastal Conference on November 2.

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The project includes an intertidal reef covered in millions of Sydney rock oysters that naturally recruited in one season plus NSW's first subtidal reef of its kind that has been seeded with the endangered angasi native oyster.

The Nature Conservancy's South East Oceans coordinator, Kirk Dahle, said while NSW still has individual native flat oysters in estuaries "the living reefs they form, to the best of our knowledge, have been completely lost.

"The oyster reefs are fun to work on but combining them with the living shoreline and restoration of saltmarsh is a perfect complementation of habitat types to assault coastal erosion with a nature-based solution."

Mr Dahle said the oyster reefs help ameliorate the wave energy while the saltmarsh holds the bank and stabilises it with its roots like the root of a tree on a river bank.

James Caffery, council's natural resource management officer, said the project marks a new approach to habitat restoration projects.

"Instead of following the old method of simply protecting for erosion, you provide multiple habitat for many different species."

The subtidal reefs are home to around 15 species of fish, similar to established reefs elsewhere and Sargassum seaweed is growing, another sign that things are on the right track and starting to establish.

The Living Shoreline provides valuable carbon drawdown, further increasing climate change resilience.

"Saltmarsh and mangroves remove and store carbon four times faster than tropical rainforest," Mr Caffery said.

"So these living shorelines will be absolutely essential to the future to keep our ecosystems in the best possible health, plus they are much more beautiful."

Given how many people walk by, the new signage will educate people about the environmental elements, as well as cultural practices as told by local Aboriginal elders.

Mr Caffery has enjoyed speaking with the public as they planted 13,000 plants.

While most people were positive, those who had reservations changed their mindset after speaking with him.

"That has been very rewarding."

Mr Dahle said the Living Shoreline was a fantastic example of using natural ecosystems to solve common coastal erosion.

"We are all very excited about its success.

"We are hopeful of doing more because so many locations could benefit from this," he said.

The Department of Primary Industries (Fisheries) is responsible for monitoring the reefs and shoreline, assisted by Joonga Land and Water Aboriginal Corporation.

Due to contractor and supply hold-ups the civil infrastructure will not be complete until March.

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