How oysters are restoring New York's polluted harbor

[NeoGreen]

Cross Posted in Energy and Environment forum/group.

https://www.treehugger.com/conservation/how-oysters-are-restoring-new-yorks-polluted-harbor.html

How oysters are restoring New York's polluted harbor
Katherine Martinko, October 12, 2018

These busy filter-feeders clean the water, attract biodiversity, and offer protection from storms.

When English explorer Henry Hudson sailed into New York City harbor in 1609, there were oysters everywhere. Accounts say he had to navigate carefully to avoid running into some 220,000 acres of oyster reefs. Fast forward 400 years and most of these oysters are gone, their population decimated by polluted water.

One group of citizens, however, is on a mission to restore the harbor's oysters to at least a shade of their former glory. The Billion Oyster Project grows baby oysters and replants them on the bottom of the Hudson River in order to kickstart a rejuvenation of the ecosystem. So far the group has planted 28 million pounds of oysters across nine reefs and the water quality is measurably improved.
Oysters are desirable residents in the river because, as Billion Oyster Project co-founder Pete Malinowski explained, they are 'ecosystem regenerators,' a species that has a disproportionately positive effect on its ecosystem, not to mention some crucial benefits for New Yorkers. They also form reefs that are effective breakwaters in storms.

When it comes to filtering water, oysters can't be beat. They filter at a rapid rate, about a gallon of water per hour, which means that each one cleans at least 24 gallons of water daily. (NPR says it's more like 30 and 50 gallons per day.) Because the standing volume of New York Harbor is 74 billion gallons, that means that, theoretically, the one billion oysters that Malinowski's organization hopes to plant would eventually be able to filter all the harbor water once every three days.

Project Website:
https://billionoysterproject.org/#