Seeing future oyster reefs through virtual reality headsets helps inspire restoration volunteers and provides a clearer image of what's to come. Learn how envisioning an outdoor utopia, with a little help from the digital environment, is key to rebuilding the coasts.
Transcript
Jess: At CERF 2025, you shared the outcomes of a project that you led incorporating virtual reality headsets and oyster reef restoration, which I thought was fascinating. Your research really showed that people are more likely to have a positive view of restoration when they can see or visualize what the restored reef will look like in the future. Can you share some of the motivation for that project and how you came up with the idea?
Katherine: The virtual reality project, I honestly think of it as more of an art project. In addition to being interested in coastal ecology and pursuing that in my degree, I'm also really interested in art and science communication. Throughout my career, I've tried to find ways to kind of merge all of those topics. I got the initial idea for the virtual reality project over 10 years ago, probably, at this point, but I went to a BFA show, so Bachelor of Fine Arts show on campus, and one of the student artworks there was a virtual reality piece. You got to like put on the VR headset, walk around in this virtual space, and it was the first time I'd ever done virtual reality, and it got me thinking that it would be a really cool way to showcase ecosystems and habitats that I work with that I would really love for other people to be able to experience in the same way.
When I started my PhD, I wanted to pursue some avenue of science communication in addition to the more hardcore ecology kind of research I was working on. And so the virtual reality idea came back. It really intrigued me as this visual representation of these ecosystems, as a way to bring these ecosystems directly to people who may not be able to go and visit them themselves in person. I want to increase this access for people, and the ultimate goal being able to connect people with those spaces and get them more interested in those ecosystems, especially ones that they maybe don't already know a lot about.
Jess: I've been able to try VR myself, and I have to say, when you watch people with a VR headset who go and break their TV because they thought something was real, you're like, how could they possibly fall for that? Trying it myself, it's extremely convincing. It's a little bit disorienting even, but it's a very interesting concept. It's a technological tool, but you designed this reality yourself. Can you talk a little bit about how you designed it? How do you make sure it lines up with the view and stuff like that?
Katherine: My virtual reality experience that I created is 360-degree video-based. You have these different kinds of virtual reality. You have the 3D-modeled, computer-simulated, and then in my case, I have these immersive 360-degree videos. There's pros and cons to both, but as a marine biologist, I don't have those computer science background skills that I would need in order to actually create a fully 3D simulated world. I wanted to create something that feasibly other scientists in my shoes interested in communicating their ecosystems, their habitats, could create similar virtual reality experiences in a way that was relatively easy to tackle.
I created my virtual reality experience using a GoPro Max camera. It has a lens on both sides of the camera, able to capture everything around it fully in 360 degrees. You can look up, down, all around the sides when you're put in that headset with that video in place. So you're able to really see that place as realistically as possible, while also being able to look in all directions and really feel fully immersed within the space. So I went out to our oyster reefs on the east coast of Florida, took this GoPro camera out, and I recorded just tons and tons of videos. The experience takes people through our restoration process.
Initially, they'll see beautiful, gorgeous, healthy oyster reef habitats, all the ecosystem services that those oysters are providing, like the habitat they're creating, the water they're filtering. In one of the scenes, this bird flies directly over the camera. When you're in the headset, it feels like you're looking up and this bird's flying right over you. Then I take people into what the degraded oyster reefs look like, the ones that we're trying to restore, and show them kind of how those habitats are degraded over time, typically by human impacts. Then they see the actual restoration. They go to a reef where volunteers are out there actively restoring that reef, and then they get to see 3 years after that restoration what that oyster reef looks like. It's fully functioning again. It looks like that normal, natural, beautiful oyster reef. It's able to provide those ecosystem services that we would really want an oyster reef to be able to provide. The VR kind of takes the viewer through that whole process, and they really get to see all the different pieces of it that come into play in the restoration.
Jess: It sounds like you had to go to an actual site that was a healthy ecosystem to film, to create that. So it's a good thing that we still have some.
Katherine: [laughs] Yes.
Jess: Was it hard to find people to try the virtual reality?
Katherine: Not really. A lot of people are interested in virtual reality. Generally, if you say you have something that's a virtual reality, people are at least intrigued and wanting to experience it. For what I did, I actually turned this into a research project, so it is part of my dissertation for my PhD. I need people to participate, so I'm really active about going out and seeking out people who are willing to participate in virtual reality. The goal for this specific version that I'm doing right now, this virtual reality oyster reef experience with this focus on restoration. We're working with volunteers who participate in some of the restoration pieces. They help make materials and restoration units, and they very rarely get to actually go out and see what these materials look like when they're in the natural habitat out on the oyster reef and how those materials are helping long-term to bring back oysters to the area and kind of restore the functioning of the whole ecosystem. The goal here is to use this virtual reality with those volunteers They may come to one event, oftentimes they're gonna make some materials, but they maybe don't really know what it's used for.
For this experiment, I had 2 groups. Our control group, this is just our normal volunteer events. People would come, they would help to make restoration units, and then they would go on their merry way feeling like, that was cool, I did something good. Don't totally know what that's gonna look like in the future, but I feel good about it. The second group was people where we showed them the virtual reality experience at the start of that volunteer event. They put on the fully immersive virtual reality headsets, they got to see this whole process of restoration, then they were able to participate in that event where they would make those restoration units that they had seen in the virtual reality. We were measuring people's volunteer experience to see whether or not the virtual reality was going to increase people's understanding of the restoration process, whether it would increase their feeling of their own personal individual impact they were having on the ecosystem, and if it would benefit and increase their connection to oyster reefs or to our lagoon system in general.
What we found through that, through those 2 different groups that we were able to test, everyone feels good about coming and volunteering. I mean, that's typically why you're volunteering. You want to feel like you make some difference in the world. So that's great. All of our volunteers, whether or not they did the VR, felt good about their experience. But with the understanding and the connection, we did see an increase with volunteers who had done the virtual reality experience at the start, where they felt much more connected to that habitat and they had a much better understanding of the work they were doing and what it actually was going to be used for in the long term towards the restoration.
Jess: Are you working with an organization that's focused on restoration or community involvement? How do you acquire those volunteers, or is it university-led?
Katherine: Part of it's university-led. My lab, run by Dr. Linda Walters, our main thing is focusing on oyster reefs, and every year we do carry out these oyster restoration projects. But we have tons of community partners who are involved in that process as well. Florida Fish and Wildlife contributes. Marine Discovery Center, which is a nonprofit on the east coast of Florida, Coastal Conservation Association. All these different groups work together with us to carry out these restoration projects. Lots of our volunteers come from all of those different places. Some of them are university students, some of them are Marine Discovery Center volunteers, some of them are members of the Coastal Conservation Association. All those people come from different places in their life to help with that restoration process and make it successful.
Jess: How hard is it to access the site? Do you have to walk miles and miles out to find this reef? How do people get there?
Katherine: All of our oyster reefs are intertidal reefs. They're exposed at low tide. On one hand, that makes it a little bit easier in terms of you just time your restoration to be right at low tide. You go out there, you can see the oyster reef, you can see what you need to restore, but you do have to access it by boats. Summer is when we do our big restoration push. All of our partners and volunteers come out. Some of them bring their own boats. We bring our boats from the university, and we basically take We take all of our materials by the boat ramp area, then we take it out to these oyster reef areas. They're not super far, it's probably maybe a 15-minute boat ride. A lot of our oyster reefs that are really degraded are in the main boating channels. Boat wakes are causing the erosion of these reefs over time. The good thing about that is they're easily accessible by boat, they're in the main boating channels, it's deep enough for the boats to get to. We can easily put our boats around the reef to get all of these materials deployed, get people creating assembly lines to bring materials and place them out so that we can carry out these pretty large-scale restoration projects with labor from all these volunteers and people who really want to be a part of that restoration.
Jess: What stage of life do you guys focus on, or what method are you using for the restoration?
Katherine: We have shifted towards using all non-plastic biodegradable materials. Our materials are made out of potato chip waste, so all the starch and stuff that's left over after making potato chips. We call them bese mats, B-E-S-E. Some of them are just big mats. You'll attach oyster shells, dead disarticulated shell, onto that mat. Other versions, they have a mesh of this bioplastic, so you'll put oyster shells in there. You can deploy those, new oysters will recruit. Some of the new ones we've been testing also use this jute material, just kind of like a burlap material. We coat it in acid-neutral cement, so it sticks together. They're nice and heavy, so they're not going to get washed away by the boats, which is a really big benefit. And they recruit tons of oysters.
We don't do any seeding of oysters. We don't put any baby oysters out with our materials. In our area, known as Mosquito Lagoon, we have pretty high oyster recruitment year-round as long as the water is warm enough. It's really only about 3 months of the year we don't see oyster recruitment. Once we put these materials out, new oysters are recruiting pretty much within that week already. You can go back 6 months later and you can barely tell that those materials are there because they're so covered in oysters. These materials have been really beneficial in bringing back these oysters just by creating a stable area for oyster spat, those baby oysters, to attach to.
Jess: In your virtual reality, there were mangroves growing on the oyster reefs. It's almost like a novel ecosystem. I mean, up until recently, mangroves, they're still migrating, they're still being found places farther north than they ever have in human history. So it just seemed really interesting to me why it would relate to flux data. If you create more land for mangroves to grow, you've improved the likelihood of survival of mangrove ecosystems. All the benefits that come with that. I imagine the mangroves are improving the stability of the oyster reef, less likely to get degraded or washed away, improving carbon storage. What do you think about the mangroves?
Katherine: This virtual reality project, that's one half of my dissertation. The other half of my dissertation is focused on this overlap of oyster and mangrove habitat. The paper I recently published talks about that topic. Ultimately, in our area in Mosquito Lagoon, kind of central east coast of Florida, our mangroves have exploded in abundance in the last 30, 40 years or so. Winters have stayed really warm in central Florida over that time period. Mangroves being more tropical, they love that warm weather. They're able to move farther and farther up the coast. We used to have more salt marsh in our area. We've seen most of that become more mangrove dominated now. And we're seeing this coupled shift. The salt marsh has been taken over and now we're seeing those mangroves recruit onto our intertidal oysteries. And potentially take over those habitats as well.
My second half of my research is really diving into what happens when we're getting mangroves on our oyster reefs. Is that a good thing? Is that maybe not so good? That's what my recent publication talks about. Mangroves are typically associated with a little bit more acidic soil than what we would find normally on an intertidal oyster reef. Mangroves are coming in, they're driving this acidification effect within the soil where the oysters are also located. Oyster shells are really prone to dissolution in acidic conditions. Our oyster reefs, their sediment pH is around 7.5 on the pH scale, and our mangrove soil pH is around 6.5. So that's a whole drop, which can cause some pretty significant effects to the oysters. Once the habitat becomes more and more mangrove dominated, you are likely to find less and less oysters, partially due to this acidification effect causing some of the dissolution, especially of the reef structure underground. But also, mangroves are really great at accreting sediments that can also cause some of the burial of oysters right around the base of the mangroves.
There might be some negative impacts on the oysters as these mangroves recruit, but these mangroves are going to expand no matter what we do. So going in and trying to prevent that, I think, is really not likely. We'll likely start to see these ecosystems start to change over time as mangroves take over and become more dominant in those areas. That might have some really great benefits for areas that maybe need that hurricane protection and those kind of things. Those mangroves might be a big benefit. But if you're more on that team oyster side, that might be something that you are not so excited for. It is a really nuanced process though. This summer we had a kind of big die-off of oysters due to how hot it was and these reefs were exposed. The sun's just baking down on these intertidal reefs all day. We were finding that reefs that were shaded by the mangroves, at least at some parts of the day, the oysters were surviving better. There's this interesting trade-off of maybe some negative impacts, but also some potentially positive impacts by having this mangrove and oyster habitat co-located.
Jess: What do you plan to do next with the VR headsets? You’ve still got them, right? So you can do anything.
Katherine: The headsets will go to Marine Discovery Center, which is the nonprofit I mentioned earlier that we work with on oyster reef restoration. They do a lot of summer camps and student outreach programs. They'll be able to use them with these videos of these oyster reefs and the restoration for students, as well as for visitors who go to Marine Discovery Center and want to learn more about the habitat and ecosystem. Before this restoration, I went to school classrooms with these virtual reality headsets too. Can't really take a class of middle schoolers out on an oyster reef, and so we wanted to see if bringing this virtual reality experience where they see these reefs from a firsthand perspective boosted any of the learning or maybe their connection to these oyster habitats. They responded really positively. A lot of the students said that they really did feel like they were actually on an oyster reef and actually in the lagoon. That was a really cool thing to see as well.
Jess: I can only imagine the shrieking that probably went on.
Katherine: Oh, yes.
Jess: “You've had it for 5 minutes. Now it's my turn!”
Katherine: Yeah. Luckily we have 15 headsets, so we're able to kind of split the class into 2 groups. There's not too much fighting going on.
Jess: Wow. That's a lot.
Katherine: Yeah.
Jess: That's great.
Katherine: Yeah, it was a great time.