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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.