Save Our Bay Scallops!
THANK YOU!! Your efforts put the Save Our Bay Scallops campaign over goal. Stay tuned for future updates on the project as VIMS puts these funds to work!
The Save Our Bay Scallops campaign is raising money in order to purchase and then seed thousands of juvenile bay scallops into the seaside bays of Virginia’s Eastern Shore with the goal of giving this species, locally extinct since the ‘30s, its best chance for revival. The recent wildly successful project to restore seagrasses in those bays, and thereby revive the bay scallops’ natural habitat, has made this project truly viable.
Bay scallops were once incredibly abundant in Virginia until eelgrass, the habitat it needed to survive, disappeared completely by 1933. With the disappearance of eelgrass, the bay scallops vanished shortly thereafter, and have not been seen here since.
Through Tribefunding, everyone has an opportunity to be a part of the bay scallop’s success. Professor of Marine Science at VIMS, Dr. Robert Orth, and his group of students and scientists have successfully restored seagrass in the waters of Virginia’s Eastern Shore seaside bays, which has resulted in one of the world’s largest, and most successful seagrass restoration programs, with almost 6,200 acres of seagrass present today. This restored seagrass habitat is absolutely essential for bay scallops to survive, since young scallops live on the grass blades and adults hide under the canopy.
Here’s where you come in!
One hundred percent of the money raised from this effort will be used to buy the bay scallop juveniles that will be introduced into the eelgrass. So the more money we raise, the more scallops we can buy and the better our chances for success.
Please share information about our effort with your friends, neighbors, and colleagues. All donations will be critical to building success for this campaign to re-vitalize our local Bay scallop population. And who wouldn’t like to be part of that?
Goal Not Met: Fewer juvenile scallops will be purchased.
Goal Exceeded: More juvenile scallops will be purchased.
Department: Biological Sciences
Advisor: Dr. Robert J. Orth
Fund held by the VIMS Foundation
Updates
US Donor Map
| Affiliation | Donors | Dollars |
|---|---|---|
| 1957 | 2 | $200 |
| 1965 | 2 | $150 |
| 1971 | 2 | $100 |
| 1972 | 1 | $100 |
| 1974 | 1 | $50 |
| 1975 | 2 | $220 |
| 1976 | 2 | $150 |
| 1977 | 1 | $250 |
| 1979 | 1 | $100 |
| 1988 | 3 | $300 |
| 1991 | 3 | $250 |
| 1994 | 1 | $50 |
| 1999 | 1 | $25 |
| 2006 | 1 | $50 |
| 2007 | 1 | $100 |
| 2008 | 1 | $10 |
| 2009 | 2 | $300 |
| 2012 | 2 | $40 |
| 2013 | 1 | $50 |
| 2014 | 1 | $250 |
| 2015 | 5 | $240 |
| 2016 | 2 | $35 |
| 2018 | 3 | $225 |
| 2019 | 1 | $100 |
| 2020 | 1 | $5 |
Donor affiliations
Donor list
Mary KillmonCome see what all the excitement is about! Donors of $100 or more will receive an invitation to a private tour of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and a discussion with project lead Dr. Robert Orth. See bay scallops firsthand and learn more about the habitat restoration that has made this bay scallop revival possible.
