Oysters On The Half Shell Are Actually Saving New York's Eroding Harbor
Across New York City, more than 70 restaurants are tossing their oyster shells not into the trash or composting pile, but into the city's eroded harbor. It's all part of Billion Oyster Project's restaurant shell-collection program.
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The shells then get a final cleaning and are moved to Billion Oyster Project's hatchery at the Urban Assembly New York Harbor School, a public high school on Governors Island that offers technical and vocational training in the marine sciences. In an aquaculture classroom's hatchery, student-grown oysters produce larvae in an artificially induced springtime environment. In one to two weeks, each larvae grows a "foot" — a little limb covered in a kind of natural glue — and then is moved to a tank full of the "cured" restaurant shells, which serve as anchors for all of those sticky feet. This phase is critical: If larvae can't find a place to attach, they die. One reclaimed shell can house 10 to 20 new live oysters, depending on shell size.
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While not all of the larvae will survive, the goal is to get at least five oysters clustered onto one restaurant shell — think flowering oyster bouquets. If the water is warm enough, mature oysters are moved to a reef structure — a cage or shellfish bag — that provides a stable area for oysters to fuse together and create a healthy reef in the New York Harbor.
Then, the oysters begin doing what oysters do — which, it turns out, is quite a lot. Oysters are natural water filters; each one cleans 30 to 50 gallons of water a day. They also provide food and shelter for all sorts of marine creatures, supporting biodiversity. "Oyster reefs provide great marine habitat, similar to coral reefs, with nooks and crannies to protect juvenile fish, and are active food for some species. They help to create a thriving ecosystem," Wachtel says.
But the biggest draw for many coastal states such as New York, especially in an era of rising sea temperatures and eviscerating hurricanes, is that oysters can provide natural breakwaters. Oyster reefs can protect against a hurricane's wave velocity, which can destroy a city's infrastructure. The New York Governor's Office of Storm Recovery has partnered with Billion Oyster Project to install oysters on its $74 million Living Breakwaters Project, which aims to reduce and reverse erosion and damage from storm waves, improve the ecosystem health of Raritan Bay and encourage environmentally conscious stewardship of nearshore waters.
Billion Oyster Project Executive Director Pete Malinowski says none of this work would be possible without the restaurant shell-collection program. "It's critical. We need oyster shells to do our work, and the only place to get them is from restaurants," Malinowski says. Luckily, restaurants are more than happy to oblige; Billion Oyster Project has collected more than 1 million pounds of oyster shells, well on the way to its goal of creating 1 billion live oysters — hence its name — across 100 acres of reefs by 2035.
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https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/10/10/654781446/oysters-on-the-half-shell-are-actually-saving-new-yorks-eroding-harbor