New Smyrna's Marine Discovery Center says goodbye parking lot, hello living shoreline

Joni Mitchell famously lamented in her 1970 environmental anthem "Big Yellow Taxi" that "they paved paradise and put up a parking lot." The Marine Discovery Center in New Smyrna Beach is trying to do just the opposite.

The center's project, dubbed "Promoting Paradise and Removing a Parking Lot," aims to remove 13,000 square feet of impervious surfaces in the center’s campus and replace them with living shoreline and coastal habitats.

The project restores coastal wetland habitat where concrete and asphalt stood for decades and serves as an expansion of the living shoreline demonstration area, according to the center.

Most of the work will be creating a little over 300 feet of living shoreline along the southwest part of the center’s campus, where its biggest parking lot is located.

“We have this steep slope of concrete material that was used to kind of keep the sediment in place,” said Tess Sailor-Tynes, the center’s conservation science coordinator, in an interview. “We dug all that out, we maintained the mangroves that have grown up through the (impervious) material, and we are looking to plant about 1,000 different plants, if not a little bit more, in that area.”

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Some of the plant species – all of which are native to the area and serve specific purposes related to their proximity to the water and elevation along the shoreline slope – include grasses, berries, Palmettos, Live Oak trees, Gumbo limbo trees, and more.

“All kinds of plants that we are working with that are meant to be in those areas will kind of flourish and create this large area of habitat and a rewilding of that area,” Sailor-Tynes said.

Being an example for the community

Work began Friday morning, when volunteers with the center helped put in about 600 plants, according to Sailor-Tynes.

The center will count on the help of more volunteers over the next few weeks to continue the work on the project.

Part of the funds for the project, whose price tag is close to $500,000, came from the Disney Conservation Fund, “which has been awarding monies to nonprofits since 2014 for water stewardship efforts,” according to the center.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission and St. Johns River Water Management District have also provided funds and groundwork for the project, according to Sailor-Tynes.

Local landscaping companies Lindley’s Nursery and Justin Kennedy Landscapes are also helping by providing some of the planting materials for the project.

“A lot of moving parts, a lot of big goals, but it’s going to be a really cool project,” Sailor-Tynes said.

Another goal for the project is to incorporate the new shoreline into the center “living shoreline demonstration area.”

“This is an area we first started to establish in the 5-acre salt marsh we restored ten years ago,” she added. “And this living shoreline demonstration area is an example of what us restoration practitioners do, but also of what homeowners and residents can do to better rewild their properties, while also adding ecological and economic benefits.”

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Living shorelines and their grasses, mangroves, oyster and other plant species help protect riverfront properties “from rising waters or natural events like hurricanes,” Sailor-Tynes explained.

“There is a lot going on,” she added. “We want to make sure that we are doing all that we can to add nature back.”

The Marine Discovery Center is located at 520 Barracuda Blvd. in New Smyrna Beach and is open Monday-Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday-Sunday from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Marine Discovery Center new project to create 300 feet of living shoreline