Eating more oysters can help restore them, too.
/Yes, you read that correctly. To restore more oysters to New York Harbor, we need to enjoy them right here in NYC. Here’s why.
National Oyster Day is coming up this Friday, August 5th. So, we found it fitting to explain why eating oysters can be both good for the planet and essential to their resurgence in NY Harbor, by addressing some of our most frequently asked questions and concerns regarding their consumption, such as:
Can we eat the oysters Billion Oyster Project is restoring?
Will we ever be able to eat oysters from New York Harbor?
Is eating oysters sustainable?
Should I stop eating oysters so Billion Oyster Project can restore a billion oysters sooner?
As you prepare to head to your favorite oyster bar this Friday, there are three points we'd like to drive home, so you can rest easy as you dine out!
1. We do not and cannot eat oysters from New York Harbor.
Harvesting oysters from New York Harbor is illegal, dangerous, and not the goal of our restoration work at Billion Oyster Project.
New York Harbor is the cleanest it’s been in over 100 years and technically safe to swim in most of the time. However, every rainfall pulls hundreds of millions of gallons of untreated household wastewater (raw sewage) into the Harbor through the city’s Combined Sewer system. While the Harbor flushes these pollutants quickly, oysters cannot. By filtering these pollutants as they feed, oysters remain unsafe for human consumption all of the time. When we decide as a community to address the infrastructure causing these overflow events, then we can begin to talk about edible oysters in New York Harbor.
At Billion Oyster Project, our oysters have a more important job to do. Think of our oyster reefs as restored coral reefs — they provide essential ecosystem services to the Harbor and shouldn’t be viewed as a potential delicacy. In addition to their historical economic value, New York oysters sustained our estuary in three vital ways. Their reefs provided habitat and protection for thousands of species, kept the quality of our waterways in check by filtering out excess nutrients and pollutants, and naturally buffered 520 miles of shoreline from erosion and storm damage. By bringing back the reefs that were meant to be here, we believe New York City can become more resilient to environmental challenges ahead and a vibrant ecosystem, once again.
2. Eating farmed oysters is more
than okay.
Luckily, they aren’t hard to come by either.
Eating our way to more oysters sounds counterintuitive, but farmed oysters served in restaurants are restoration gold in disguise. Oyster farms provide virtually the same environmental benefits that our reefs do. Contrary to most intensified agriculture, which can pollute our atmosphere with greenhouse gasses and our estuaries with eutrophication, responsibly grown sea greens and shellfish actively remove pollution and promote local biodiversity. This is known as Regenerative Aquaculture — where the food being grown actually aids the surrounding ecosystem, making oysters one of the most sustainable sources of protein.
In other good news, almost all oysters served at New York City restaurants are farmed. Due to generations of pollution in American estuaries, harvestable wild oysters reefs are hard to come by. Additionally, wild oysters grow on top of each other – could you imagine trying to pry oysters from an Outback Steakhouse Bloomin’ Onion? It’s not pretty. Putting these oysters on the market requires high labor and transportation costs for lower yields. Farmed oysters are just easier - that's why almost 95% of all U.S. market oysters are farmed along our coastlines. Farms receive their seed from hatcheries and grow oysters individually for consumption, normally in suspended structures - not reefs. This external practice doesn't harm our reefs or impede our restoration efforts. In fact, farmed oysters are key to our success!
Millions of shells are being used to restore a billion oysters,
all thanks to farmed oysters and restaurants that serve them.
Oyster farms may not produce permanent reefs, but they do allow restaurants and their oyster-loving patrons to provide us with the shells needed to start them. In the wild, young oysters — or spat — must settle on a hard surface to survive. Oyster, clam, and scallop shells provide that surface — rich in calcium carbonate and perfect for oysters to settle on. Thanks to New Yorkers’ lasting love for oysters, these shells are a plentiful local resource.
Our Shell Collection Program is not just a restoration initiative; it’s a waste mitigation effort — giving restaurants an opportunity to divert shell waste from landfills in addition to supporting the growth of new reefs in their backyard. Since 2015, over 100 NYC restaurants have donated 2 million pounds of shell to our efforts!
With this information in mind, we hope you enjoy #NationalOysterDay knowing you can have your oysters, and eat them too — hopefully with one of our restaurant partners.
Head to our Restaurants page to view our 55+ restaurants currently recycling their shells with us. For frequent diners who love oysters and our work, Billion Oyster Project Membership comes with six free oysters when you dine with select Membership Restaurants, early access to Billion Oyster Party tickets and Oyster Social tickets, private tours, and invites to members-only programming.