When Ten Eyck met with UVA faculty members, he found a receptive audience. “The marine science faculty, including me and several others, talked about what our program was doing in relationship to some of his experiences and background,” said Mike Pace, a professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences. “One thing that became clear is that Pete’s quite a keen person in terms of marine science. He has a long-term interest in the coastal zone environment.”

Ten Eyck wanted to create a legacy gift in honor of his parents. At first, he considered some form of estate gift, until his wife, Lisa, suggested he go for something more immediate. “So I called Mike back and said let's talk about how we go forward,” Ten Eyck said. As the discussions continued, a consensus emerged. “We started talking about what we could all do,” said Pace, “and basically, he created a fund to take on innovative ideas as they’re developing in the marine sciences area within the department.”

The Fairfax Marine Research Fund will serve as seed capital for up-and-coming research projects that can be leveraged into larger federal grants. “What this funding can do is allow us to develop a strong proposal to send to a federal agency down the road,” Pace said. “A lot of our funding comes from the National Science Foundation, which funds basic environmental research, so it’s a huge asset to have this kind of seed money. You can’t compete if you don’t have a really good idea, and usually you need some initial data to support that good idea.”

From Ten Eyck’s perspective, providing the vital initial support for research that has an immediate, transparent impact on the marine environment was precisely what he was hoping to create. “The idea was that a fund at UVA would be more efficient than giving to a traditional charity, which is typically 75-85% efficient,” he said. “As the administrative costs are already covered by the University, gifts or contributions are 100% efficient—all going to impact the environment. The activity is transparent; you know exactly what your gift is doing. It results in scaling your charitable giving.”

Oysters are nature’s peerless aquatic filtration system. An adult oyster can filter up to 5 liters or 1.3 gallons of water an hour—an amount equal to 30 gallons per day. Historically, oysters could filter the Chesapeake Bay's entire water volume in less than a week. Not only do they filter sediment and algae, they remove nitrogen from the water. Their reefs also serve as nurseries and feeding grounds for rockfish, crabs, and other marine life. For generations, oysters have played an important role in Virginia’s coastal economy, but overharvesting and waves of disease outbreaks have decimated their ranks.

Oyster reef restoration offers an elegantly practical solution for adapting to climate change. Reefs close to shore can reduce the force of storm waves and help slow erosion rates along marsh edges. In 2017, The Nature Conservancy launched a joint project with UVA to build eight experimental reefs with a goal of measuring the reefs' ability to reduce wave action.

Master’s degree candidate Sara Hogan (Grad Arts & Sciences ’23), based out of UVA’s Anheuser-Busch Coastal Research Center, is using LiDAR data to map reefs in the intertidal region of the Virginia Coast Reserve in order to understand their location, elevation, and correlation with the surrounding environment. LiDAR is a laser radar system that shows the structure of surfaces in very fine detail and can create maps to the millimeter and centimeter level, allowing scientists to see reefs in ways they couldn’t otherwise. Hogan is also examining how best to design restored oyster reefs by investigating how these reefs can improve habitat and contribute to shoreline protection. “This is a part of the world where we have very rapid rates of sea level rise,” Pace said. “Protecting against this could be a nice additional benefit of restoring reefs in that region.”

“I'm really excited that we've already sponsored a project,” Ten Eyck said. “The Chesapeake Bay and the Eastern Shore are tremendously important and very near and dear to my heart. I think we need to continue to focus on causes like the marine environment, pollution, global warming, all of the big things. This effort—the Fairfax Fund—is a way to seed to scale. We can actually see and quantify the results. That’s cool.”