In 2019, New York restaurants turned discarded oyster shells into a unusual plan to rebuild the city’s historic reefs

In 2019, New York city made an effort to use discarded oyster shells to get a second life underwater. The restaurants across New York collected their used oyster shells so they could eventually be returned to New York Harbor and used to rebuild oyster reefs. The unusual recycling program was part of the Billion Oyster Project, a nonprofit based on Governors Island that was working to restore oysters to the waters surrounding New York City. The project's long-term goal was to restore 1 billion oysters across 100 acres of oyster reefs in New York Harbor by 2035.

The Billion Oyster Project was working with 75 restaurants around New York City to collect discarded oyster shells rather than sending them to landfills. The shells were sorted and stored before being collected by The Lobster Place, which operated the project's shell collection program. "We take the oyster shells from restaurants and bring them to our shell pile," Agata Poniatowski, the project's education outreach coordinator, told ABC News.

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The shells were then left to "cure" and this gave them enough time to pass for potential bacteria, disease and invasive species to be eliminated before the shells could be used in restoration. Once there's no bacteria and no invasive species, no disease, the oysters are brought to the hatchery. The recycled shells could then become a surface for baby oysters. "Every oyster shell donated to us can be the home for 10 to 20 oysters," she said.

Millions of baby oysters were being raised

The best part about the Billion Oyster Project was that the restoration work was not limited to restaurants. Students at the New York Harbor School on Governors Island also learnt about marine restoration through hands-on programs. They worked with floating eco docks, studied underwater conditions and helped with oyster restoration, including raising oysters in the project's nursery and hatchery.

Once oysters spawned and attached themselves to the recycled shells, they were moved into tanks. Rebecca Resner, the hatchery manager, told ABC News in 2019 that "we condition oysters in this lab and each tank holds 600 bags of shells where nearly 10 million baby oysters get acclimated to the water, feed on micro algae and grow."

The project was attempting to bring back an ecosystem that had once been a major feature of New York Harbor. In the 17th century, when Henry Hudson arrived in the region, New York Harbor had nearly 220,000 acres of oyster reefs, according to the Billion Oyster Project.

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Those reefs supported thousands of associated species and formed part of an exceptionally productive estuarine ecosystem. But the oyster population declined dramatically over the following centuries.

By 1906, reefs had been dredged, covered in silt and affected by severely degraded water quality. The harbor had become increasingly hostile to oysters and other marine life.

Why oysters were chosen?

Oysters are more than a popular seafood item and they can play an important role in the health of coastal ecosystems. Oysters, also known as "ecosystem engineers" can filter nitrogen pollution from water as they eat, which helps reduce triggers for algal blooms that can deplete the water of oxygen and create “dead zones.” Oysters are a type of keystone species, which means that they play a crucial role in the function and influence of the aquatic ecosystem and other species largely depend on it.

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"Oysters are like the greenest form of food production because you don't put any input into the water," oyster expert Rowan Jacobsen told ABC News in 2019. "They get their food out of the water and clean the water in the process. So it's actually a net positive."

According to the Billion Oyster Project, oyster reefs can "soften the blow of large waves, reduce flooding, and prevent erosion along shorelines." "Beyond the pure environmental aspects, oysters are also being recognized for other ecosystem services that they provide and one of the biggest is storm protection," Jacobsen explained.

The Billion Oyster Project said it had installed 12 reef sites across seven acres, planted 28 million live oysters, filtered 19.7 trillion gallons of water and collected more than 1.3 million pounds of oyster shells that were diverted from landfills.