Hey, there! Log in / Register

Area restaurants saving oyster shells to help grow new oysters in Boston Harbor

The Massachusetts Oyster Project reports a growing number of local restaurants are saving their shucked shells so that they can be used to start new oyster beds in the harbor and nearby estuaries.

The shells provide the calcium young oysters need to grow as part of the Project's efforts to use oysters as natural filters to keep the harbor clean - not to raise slurpy goodness for local diners:

The flow in the Charles River flow is about 300 million gallons per day. Ten small beds of oysters 225 feet square (less than a football field) could cleanse this volume on a daily basis. Would this happen instantaneously? No.Would every gallon of flow be filtered? No.But can these Oysters improve the situation? Absolutely.

Additionally, the nooks and crannies of a reef support an incredible amount of sea life. So bringing back the reef and its rugosity can turn a barren desert-like sea-bottom into a lush biosphere.

Free tagging: 


Ad:


Like the job UHub is doing? Consider a contribution. Thanks!

Comments

oyster beds in the bathrooms of city hall.

...Quite a nutritive environment, I'd assume. Maybe to excess though. Who knows...

up
Voting closed 0

Why would you want to subject a poor, dead oyster to that? I know that it's just a shell of an Oyster Rockefeller but still, have some respect for animals. They deserve a better final resting place than City Hall.

up
Voting closed 0

Shell game

up
Voting closed 0

Unfortunately it's of the aural variety so is not likely to be filtered by the oysters.

up
Voting closed 0

The best way to create new oyster beds and to really get a lot of shells would be for there to be a law.

Make it mandatory that all restaurants provide us with not only a $1.00 oyster night once a week but also a 50 cent oyster night /day once a week.

Oh yeah, and free beer.

http://cappyinboston.blogspot.com/

up
Voting closed 0

$.05 / shell deposit on all raw bar purchases.

up
Voting closed 0

Did anyone notice a list of restaurants participating in this program? All I could find was apparently a list of new restaurants to join in.

up
Voting closed 0

The have a site here : http://www.massoyster.org/

Here is the friends of Mass Oyster: Island Creek, B&G and Harpoon are some of the places mentioned: http://www.massoyster.org/Friends_of_MOP.html

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/massoyster

Just call me Mr. Helpful

up
Voting closed 0

Thanks, Mr. Helpful.

This link also mentions a few more places: http://www.massoyster.org/shell_recycling.html

This may come as a shock, but a non profit has a crappy, hard to navigate website.

up
Voting closed 0

that beats the taste of a Deer Island Oyster.

up
Voting closed 0

Unless you have experienced the joys of a nice Rocky Mountain Oyster inside your mouth, you should not be allowed to comment.

Thats a whole other experience.

up
Voting closed 0

takes balls.

up
Voting closed 0

Wynn Resorts offered to restore an old oyster bed location in the Mystic River next to their Everett property, but the state said no, at least for the time being. (They mentioned this at their presentation to Mystic River Watershed Association at Tufts on October 28.)

up
Voting closed 0