A gang of Navy volunteers showed up in Bena Monday morning—on their day off—to give the Chesapeake Bay Foundation a hand with a unique shoreline restoration and reef building project.

About two dozen sailors and officers formed a bucket brigade to move hundreds of bags of oyster shells from the shoreline into the waters of Sarah’s Creek to build an offshore breakwater/oyster reef along shoreline owned by Charles Hogge of Bena.

The project was designed by Gloucester resident and wetlands board member Walter Priest, who works for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and coordinated by CBF’s oyster restoration and fisheries scientist Tommy Leggett, his assistant, Jackie Harmon, and summer intern Krista Sweet.

Lt. Cmdr. Jon Still of the USS Harry S. Truman said his crew would normally have been on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier, spending a hot, sweaty, 14-hour day signaling aircraft to land, chocking and chaining planes, driving trac...