Billion Oyster Project to Scale Oyster Capacity by 500% this Summer!

It’s been three months. Three months since our last full staff meeting on Governors Island. Three months since we were moved indoors and forced to interact increasingly through our electronic devices. Three months separated from each other and our natural world. 

Today, we are FINALLY back in the field preparing for our biggest field season to date! We intend to restore more oysters in the next few months than we have in all the years prior. We would not be able to do this without our new partner Red Hook Terminals (RHT). One of two remaining shipping container terminals in the five boroughs, RHT has generously donated space to Billion Oyster Project so that we can scale our operations to the next level. 

With a compressed field season, and without volunteers and students, the task is daunting. Some of our fabrication work has been outsourced to metal shops and our field staff are working in small, socially distanced “quaran-teams’ in Red Hook and on Governors Island to prepare.

If all goes well, our tanks (or in this case shipping containers) will be full of oysters and shell-filled reef structures by the first week of July, and we will have increased our restoration capacity by 500% by the fall! Much of this work is supported by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. We are so grateful for the continued support and willingness to invest in our staff, facilities, and especially in our students. 

We’ve also spent the last three months developing new tools for supporting teachers, students, and families at home. We’ve found new ways to bring oysters and the Harbor into your living room through video content, online resources, and most recently our 6th Annual Symposium, which was our first-ever Virtual Symposium. Over 70 projects were submitted, reviewed, and shared by students throughout the five boroughs. We had 190 participants join the symposium celebration and recognize that regardless of what school looks like in the fall, Billion Oyster Project is ready to continue engaging young people in the work of restoring oyster reefs to NY Harbor. 

As our world experiences a hard shove into the future, it is now more important than ever that we remember the value of the natural, open spaces around us. Recent events of racism and violence towards the BIPOC community have been a stark reminder to us all of how inaccessible the natural world can be to friends, family, and co-workers in our community. We must continue to work to improve fair and equal access to waterfronts and waterways throughout our city. Here's our pledge.

If you are in a position to support these initiatives during this challenging time, we would sincerely appreciate your help by midnight on Tuesday, June 30. Signing up to give monthly is especially helpful in sustainably scaling Billion Oyster Project's impact!