Hundreds of oysters found on NYC coast — indicating vital species is on the mend
Looks like Queens is turning into the oysters’ Rockefeller Center.
A stretch of the borough’s shoreline has been identified as the hip new hotspot for the mollusks — marking a powerful indication that the once bountiful bivalves have a chance at thriving in the Big Apple once again.
A dozen volunteers counted some 700 oysters living in the mud flats of Powell’s Cove Park Wednesday as part of a city-wide initiative to restore the struggling populations so that the filter feeders can provide the area with natural benefits, such as cleaning the water and bolstering the shoreline.
The Wild Oyster Survey — the first ever conducted in the northern Queens neighborhood by the BOP — was being conducted to determine whether there are enough wild oysters surviving in the area to indicate that it would make a good spot for the group to plant one of their artificial oyster reefs.
“It really means that we will be able to have functioning reefs and support more habitat and biodiversity in the area depending on the size of oysters we see and the density,” Cody Herrmann, a senior community science coordinator for Billion Oyster Project (BOP), told The Post.
The nonprofit group is working to restore one billion oysters around New York’s waters, and has already installed thriving oyster reefs elsewhere around the city water, including New York Harbor.
Like much of the five boroughs, College Point was once lush with oysters — New York City was even known as the Big Oyster before pollution and overharvesting decimated the population in the 20th century.
To evaluate the population, volunteers from the neighborhood group Coastal Preservation Network were required to count as many oysters as possible during the two-hour expedition — a task as tedious as it sounds.
Small groups of three trekked through the muddy shores of low tide to scoop up every oyster they could spot, measure its length and notate the latitude and longitude where it was found.
Among the trove found Wednesday was a nearly foot-long oyster with smaller mollusks growing on its body and dozens of rings on its flanks — like trees, the number of rings indicates how old the creature is.
And although promising, the growing oyster population is still off the table — literally.
New Yorkers are not allowed to gobble up the mollusks or any other shellfish because of the sewage contamination in Big Apple waters, which had largely contributed to their demise over the last century.
“Billion Oyster Project restores oysters for their ecological benefits. NY State regulators maintain the closure of New York Harbor’s waters to all shellfishing due to sewage contamination,” the group said in a statement.
“BOP delivers programming in communities where restoration takes place to educate the public about the benefits of restoration as well as the serious health risks associated with consuming contaminated shellfish.”
The group counted a total of 696 oysters during the expedition.
The strong oyster presence means that the College Point park could make for the perfect spot to install a man-made reef to further bolster its numbers as part of an ongoing BOP project with the Long Island Sound Futures Fund.
The partnering groups have already installed over 140 million oysters at restoration sites throughout the five boroughs in the last decade, including under the Brooklyn Bridge and on the shores of Governor’s Island.
Besides being a tasty meal, oysters are essential to keeping New York waters clean — the shellfish can filter up to 50 gallons of water per day, and their reefs help prevent soil erosion.
“It’s important for us to know where oysters already live so we can figure out where we can have functioning sites for our oysters,” said Herrmann, who added that the hands-on experience offered locals the chance to meet their shellfish friends.
“If you really don’t have experiences around these types of things, you can’t steward them. You’re not going to know they exist, you’re not going to care about that. These are areas that we really need to protect and that are really vulnerable and super important with changing weather and storm surge and climate change.”
BOP is still evaluating whether it will take that next step, which involves planting “reef balls” — concrete molds made to mimic natural reefs that provide a hard surface for the oysters to grow and hide from predators.
Oysters wouldn’t be the only ones to benefit from the artificial reefs — spotted hake, eels blue crabs and even dolphins are known to thrive because of the man-made structures.
“We’re excited about the future. We’re excited to contribute to an already naturally occurring process and support that. There’s a lot of beautiful things that come with reef restoration,” said Thay-Ling Moya Perez, the site’s restoration project manager.
