Whether you have a taste for them or not, the oyster is one of nature’s most amazing creatures.
These humble pearl-makers are not just a briny delicacy, they also keep our oceans clean as all-natural filters: an acre of oysters can filter 140 million gallons of water an hour, removing 3,000 pounds of nitrogen a year.
And after they’re shucked and slurped by the dozen, their empty shells also have a remarkable use. According to the Oyster Recovery Partnership (ORP), they are the best material to use when raising new oysters and restoring oyster reefs. As ORP executive director Stephan Abel says in the video below, “Each shell can be home to 10 new oysters when recycled and replanted.”
At the moment, the number of oysters being removed from the Louisiana coast is greater than what is being returned. To make up for this deficit, several restaurants in New Orleans are cutting down on their waste by returning the ones that patrons toss to the Gulf Coast, Good News Network reports.
“The main reason we want to be involved in recycling oyster shells is because we’re such a large user of the resource,” said Paul Rotner, chief operating officer of Acme Oyster House in New Orleans. “It’s in our best interest. We need the shells in order to enrich the life span of our current oyster beds and to build new reefs.”
MORE: Kelp: The Sea Weed That Could Save Mankind
Thanks to a $1 million donation from Shell Oil Company, the state has kicked off its first formal oyster shell recycling program for New Orleans restaurants, according to a press release from The Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana (CRCL).
Considering the amount of oysters that seafood restaurants go through in a day, that’s a lot of shells being diverted from landfills. In a single weekend, the coalition collected more than 19,000 pounds of shells from Acme Oyster House, the Bourbon House, Redfish Grill, Peche Seafood Grill, Felix’s Restaurant and Oyster Bar and Lüke.
Hilary Collis, the restoration program director of CRCL told NOLA.com that the organization plans on returning about 1,500 tons of oyster shell to Louisiana’s coast each year. These shells will help strengthen existing reefs and build new ones, all while protecting the coast and provide habitats for a number of other ocean creatures, such as fish and crabs.
So the next time you find yourself down on the Gulf Coast, slurp away!
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Tag: Seafood
Kelp: The Sea Weed That Could Save Mankind
Bren Smith blends into the New England seascape, a waterman decked out in waders tooling around on his boat in the Long Island Sound. On this hazy July morning, he’s motored out aboard the Mookie III from a Stony Creek, Conn., dock to check on his oyster beds scattered between the Thimble Islands. Another boat putters by, and Smith raises his arm to point, his hands cloaked in rubber gloves to protect against the barnacles. “That guy,” Smith says, “is only catching about five pounds of lobsters a day. He doesn’t even pay for half his fuel with that.” And with this observation, Smith shatters the illusion that he’s just another fisherman chasing his catch.
Smith, in fact, is a genuine revolutionary, a man who sees powerful currents of change in the choppy waters off the Atlantic seaboard. And his neighbor, chugging past with his nearly empty hold, is proof that the end of a way of life is looming—and the beginning of a new one is at hand.
Climate change has affected the fishing beds. Ocean acidification, a product of rising atmospheric CO2 levels, kills off coral reefs, causes toxic algae blooms and dissolves the shells of oysters and other mollusks, researchers say.
And then there’s what Smith calls the “rape and pillage” of the world’s oceans—the overfishing that has dried up once-fertile sources of food, and sent unemployment in once-thriving seaside communities through the roof. Smith assigns himself a share of the blame. He fished for McDonald’s in the Bering Sea some years back, and pushed the cod stocks to the brink. But grousing about it, and hoping government regulation will solve the problem, won’t do the trick. What fishermen catch needs to be rethought. What fishermen should be doing, in Smith’s view, is harvesting kelp.
Yes, you read that right: the slimy brown sea vegetation that has grossed out generations of New England beachgoers. You might think of it as an annoyance of no particular significance to mankind. Smith sees it as a jobs program, an amazing source of nutrition, a strategic adaptation to the havoc being wrought by global warming—and, quite possibly, the next big thing in trendy New York City restaurants.
He calls it his “path of ecological redemption,” and he’s calling on fishermen, businessmen and consumers to follow it with him.
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