In 1609, as Henry Hudson sailed his three-master into the harbour of what is today New York, the English naval explorer must have had a lot on his mind: Conflicts with Native Americans, the health of his crew, the still unsuccessful search for a sea route to Asia.
One thing Hudson probably wasn’t thinking about was the oyster beds stretching for miles in the water below. More than 400 years later, there is little left of that natural splendour — but environmental activists are fighting for an oyster comeback.
Today, it’s hard to imagine that the metropolis of 8.5 million people was once the world’s oyster capital. When Hudson arrived, the oyster reefs were spread across more than 890 square kilometres.
“Anyone in the area need not have travelled far to reach into shallow waters and pluck oysters like ripe fruit,” writes Mark Kurlansky in his book “The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell” about the saltwater delicacy.
But by the beginning of the 20th century, New Yorkers had eaten all the oysters. Manhattan had grown rapidly, and the swampy, rocky banks of the tidal waters — an ideal home for oysters — were replaced by bulkheads and piers.
And then came the tons of sewage and chemicals. It wasn’t until a comprehensive law on keeping water clean was passed in 1972 that the situation began to change. The only question was: could the stocks recover and perhaps even help to improve water quality thanks to their important filter function?
This is where the Billion Oyster Project comes in. It recycles 3.6 tons of oyster shells per week from about 80 restaurants in the city and turns them into breeding grounds for oyster larvae. In so-called harbour laboratories, germ cells are first fertilised in water tanks. The resulting larvae are then supplied with algae cultures and after two to three weeks placed in tanks containing the shells from the restaurants.
This docking is successful with 10 to 40 per cent of the larvae, which then turn into oysters. They continue to grow in floating cages and are eventually transferred to newly built reefs and grids in the harbour. However, the oysters bred in this way are not edible — the water in the harbour is too polluted for that.
Since the project began five years ago, 28 million oysters have already been planted by schoolchildren — New York’s public schools include the non-profit project in their lessons — and volunteers.
What already sounds like a big achievement is actually just the start for project director Pete Malinowski. The goal is 1 billion oysters, which means only 2.8 per cent have been planted so far. One billion oysters would clean the standing water in the harbour (inflow and outflow from the Atlantic not included) once every three days, says Malinowski.
But the organisers of the project are interested in more than that. They also want to forge a stronger connection between the residents and the port they live next to. “Most New Yorkers live within walking distance of the water, most streets end at the water, yet New Yorkers do not identify themselves as inhabitants of a port city or an important natural system,” says Malinowski.
More than 6,000 schoolchildren and 9,000 volunteers have been directly or indirectly involved in the oyster project to date. One is 17 year-old Jaelin McGriff, who looks after the larvae in the harbour laboratory.
Even though the oysters in New York Harbor are not edible, McGriff says he has already tried the shellfish in a restaurant. But he prefers the biological side of the whole thing: “I liked it, but it had a slimy aftertaste. It’s not my kind of food.” – dpa
