Tenant Spotlight: Billion Oyster Project’s New Community Reef in Queens and Oyster Tanks in Red Hook
Jul 30, 2020 12:59 pm
Billion Oyster Project, headquartered here on Governors Island, is making great strides in their mission to restore the biodiversity-boosting bivalves to New York Harbor this summer. This entry, taken from their blog, highlights their new community oyster reef (their first in Queens!) and another one details the huge new oyster tanks they’ve installed in Red Hook.
Monday, July 20, was a BIG day at Billion Oyster Project! The installation of 96 bags of shell, with nearly 29,000 oysters in the form of “spat”, was completed by an all-women crew along the warm, but picturesque waterfront in Bayswater Point State Park.
Although we had pictured this day with local students, educators, and volunteers by our side, nearly 100 people joined us LIVE on Instagram to watch the action unfold!
“I’m really excited to be here today” said Tatiana Castro, Restoration Field Coordinator at Billion Oyster Project. “We have been working on this project for a long time and are happy to be putting these babies in the water to see how they can grow in this location.“
Of the 96 bags installed, 16 were made of coconut fiber. We are experimenting with this alternative to plastic in hopes of moving towards the use of more sustainable materials across our reef sites.
This project would not have been possible without our partners Jamaica Bay-Rockaway Parks Conservancy and New York State Parks, as well as support from Simons Sandbox, an initiative of the Simons Foundation.
We can’t wait to monitor this spat on shell (pictured above) later this season. Then, when we return to monitor next summer, we hope to find that the oysters have become adults, spawned, and that the blank shells have new larvae settled on them.