A Brand New Reef at Brooklyn Bridge Park
Below the city’s historic waterways sits a new age New York Harbor. One that has made it through centuries of war, titans of industry, and varying levels of pollution among its shorelines, but is now home to hundreds of millions of new oysters thanks to our friends at Billion Oyster Project.
Known as the global standard in oyster reef restoration and education, our friends at BOP have worked tirelessly since 2014 when Murray and Pete envisioned a healthy, more biodiverse NY Harbor and believed restoration without education was only temporary.
“Pete and I both had the opportunity to fall in love with the environment as kids, and we wanted to reproduce that feeling for as many kids in the city as possible.”
Now having involved 19,000 volunteers, over 20,000 students across 100 NYC schools, and recycling shell from 83 restaurants the program is widely considered a major success for NY Harbor and the blueprint for more healthy waterways across the globe using the power of oysters.
It was early in the year when we got a call from our friends at Billion Oyster Project. For years, we knew they were working on a new oyster reef to be installed in the waters below Brooklyn Bridge Park. When they told us some of our oysters would be a part of the new reef we booked a trip to the big apple as fast as we could.
The oysters are lowered into the harbor attached to reef balls. These concrete forms are packed with oyster larvae. They will form the foundation of the reef on which we expect to see significant growth over the next year when it should flourish into the foundation of a budding marine ecosystem with fish and crabs. among other marine species, calling it home.
After a trip to check out the shell pile and Harbor School on Governor’s Island, we returned to the city that never sleeps. It’s often said among friends familiar with BOP that 99.99% of New Yorkers walk by these oyster reefs every day and have no idea they exist, nor do they know how much of a benefit they are having to its waterways. Our job is to change that.
Thank you to our partners at Billion Oyster Project and their tireless work over the past 10 years. Their progress and the sense of community they have created is nothing short of inspiring!
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