Billion Oyster Project: Restoring Endangered Oyster Reefs

Billion Oyster Project

The nonprofit Billion Oyster Project (BOP) is saving the rapidly declining oyster population by reviving New York oyster reefs and aiming to restore a billion wild oysters into New York Harbors by 2025.

Due to overharvesting, habitat destruction, and pollution, the last commercial oyster bed was closed in 1927, and only 1% of oyster reefs remain today, making oyster reef restoration projects extremely important.

Nearly 2 billion oysters per year are eaten across the globe, and almost all of the oysters consumed come from farms. While oyster farming is generally considered environmentally friendly and sustainable, many natural oyster populations are considered functionally extinct, and if something isn’t done, then oysters could go extinct completely within the next decade.

But not if the Billion Oyster Project has anything to say about it. With over 15,000 volunteers and over 100 million oysters restored since 2014, The Billions Oyster Project strongly believes that oyster reef restoration relies on 3 pillars: community engagement, shell collection, and individual oyster growth.

BOP’s Oyster Reef Restoration Methods

The New York Harbour was once an oyster hub. But as the city’s population grew, so did its appetite for oysters. The average New Yorker ate about 600 oysters per year, and vendors sold close to a million oysters daily in the 18th and 19th centuries in what can be called the “Golden Age of Oysters.”

To restore the once-thriving marine ecosystem, the Billion Oyster Project trifecta method includes:

• Community engagement: The Oyster restoration project has collaborated with over 75 restaurants to collect discarded oyster shells.
• Shell collection program: These shells are diverted from landfills into BOP’s shell collection bins and sent to BOP’s curing site to begin oyster restoration. The Billion Oyster Project has amassed over two million pounds of shells so far.
• Oyster Restoration: When the shells are brought to the curing site, each shell is implanted with an infant oyster, which is then placed in the reef to restore the oyster population.

The Powerful Benefits of Oyster Reef Restoration

Oyster restoration projects come with several important benefits. Oysters are filter feeders, removing contaminants and bacteria from our waterways — one adult oyster can filter 50 gallons of water per day.

Oyster beds or reefs are also home to thousands of species, such as fish, invertebrates, and even birds. Birds in particular rely on oyster reefs as a critical source that provides food. The reefs stabilize the river sediment, protect against boat wakes, and provide critical habitat for the larval stages of crustaceans and fish, among other marine life.

Besides their ecological importance, oyster reefs greatly decrease the event of soil erosion. Soil erosion has effectively decreased the nutritional value of the food we eat by as much as 38% in the last couple of decades.

Oyster Restoration Projects Can Greatly Battle Climate Change

Grey infrastructure includes man-made water management systems like dams, pipelines, and wastewater treatments. In the last decade, it has been shown that many nature-based solutions are more viable and cost-effective than traditional man-made infrastructures when it comes to preventing erosion and flooding—both of which are caused by massive rain events due to global warming

Implementing nature-based solutions creates an ecosystem that has countless ecological benefits. In addition to preventing flooding and erosion, natural infrastructure increases biodiversity and carbon sequestration. Natural-based solutions like oyster reef restoration can effectively reduce climate change instead of simply dealing with the consequences of it.

Murray Fisher and Pete Malinowski

Pete Malinowski and Murray Fisher, the founders of the Billion Oyster Project, show us that restoration can be done. Better yet, they show us anyone can spearhead change.

Pete Malinowski says he was a “terrible student“, but now, he is a teacher. His passion for the environment gave birth to the Billion Oyster Project. Today, he works with students from Harbor School, among other NYC schools, offering them in-field knowledge that would serve any youngster well in school. The Billion Oyster Project has engaged more than 100 of these schools in New York City.