More than 20 volunteers got muddy in the Monday morning heat and humidity to help build a sanctuary for tens of thousands of oysters in Hoffler Creek.

The volunteers were organized through a partnership between the Nansemond River Preservation Alliance and the King’s Fork High School Ecology Club. They met at the dock behind the Burbage Grant residence of Cindy Pinell, the program manager for NRPA’s Nansemond Water Initiative to connect the classroom with the environment.

Some of the 15 Ecology Club members brought parents, grandparents and siblings to show them what the club was all about, and more club volunteers met again on Tuesday to do the same thing at a site on the Chuckatuck Creek, according to NRPA President Elizabeth Taraski.

Other volunteers like Xavier Selden, 23, put on boots, waders and gloves to pull out the oyster-filled “Taylor floats” from the creek on Monday.

“There’s a lot of pretty oysters out here,” Selden said as he stood in waist-high water. “The water feels good too.”

Volunteers got started at 9 a.m. and had collected more than 20,000 oyster shells from the floats by noon, ranging from the size of their fingers to bigger than their hands. They cleaned the mud from the shells as tiny crabs crawled out of the floats and were swept back into the water.

They sorted the oysters into piles of larger live ones, smaller live ones and empty shells of dead ones. After the barnacles were scraped from each of the five “Taylor floats” and the mud was power washed away, the smaller oysters were placed back inside of bags designed for both protection against predators and for future growth, according to Emily Acosta, 17, secretary and treasurer for the Ecology Club.

The larger oysters were positioned inside an approximately 3-foot-tall oyster sanctuary in the water just off the dock. These live oysters are sandwiched by the dead oyster shells for protection against fish, turtles, river otters and other local predators, according to Pinell.

But it won’t just be a sanctuary for shellfish, Pinell said. Feather blenny fish will lay their eggs inside the dead oyster shells, and other marine life in the creek will be able to thrive thanks to these shells.

“They provide a sanctuary and home for hundreds of other critters in the reef,” she said. “If you didn’t have that oyster reef, then a lot of these critters would die off.”

Oysters are natural water filters, and just one can filter more than 50 gallons in a single day, according to chesapeakebay.net. Much of the pollution plaguing local waterways has stemmed from the drastic reduction in the oyster population.

Acosta also emphasized how the oysters are intertwined with the livelihood within the food chain. If one species dies out, then whatever feeds on that species will also diminish, and so on.

“It’s like a downward spiral,” she said. “That’s what everyone is ignoring and letting happen, so we’re trying to fix that.”

The Ecology Club was formed in 2014 and has since swelled to 62 members as of Monday, according to biology teacher and club advisor Tonya Bangley, who was quick to praise her students for organizing the volunteers.

“They’re understanding the value of community partnerships and becoming active and responsible members of their community,” she said.

Acosta will go into her senior year of KFHS this fall hoping to set a precedent for the incoming freshmen to continue the club long after she and her friends graduate.

“We expect it to flourish after we’re gone because of all the work we’ve done,” she said.