Brad Restores Oyster Reefs

[boat engine revving]

[upbeat music]

Good day in the office, Kev-o!

[boat horn]

Woo!

Yeah!

Hey guys, today on It's Alive!,

we're out here in the New York Harbor and we're teaming up

with the folks from the Billion Oyster Project

out on Governors Island.

And we're going to be learning how oysters are used,

not as a food, but as a tool to reintroduce structure,

habitat, and also clean the waters around the city.

So we're going to go meet up with them

and plant some oysters.

[beep] plant some oysters!

[upbeat music]

[snap]

You might wanna double check that knot, Pete.

[blooper reel beep] [folk music]

All right, Pete. So, you know, we're in Governors Island

which is this beautiful little time capsule

of New York City.

You know, which leads me to my question.

You know, where are you getting all these oyster shells?

[bouncing drum]

All the shells you see here

were collected from restaurants in New York City.

So we operate a shell collection program

with about 80 partner restaurants

and they cure for a year out of the water.

At that point, I mean, you can see the sun

and the weather sort of desiccates the shells

and kills any living organisms on them so that we don't

have to worry about introducing anything.

And then we put them in tanks with oyster larvae

and then they'll go from there out

onto barges onto the bottom as an oyster reef.

So, we're just mimicking that natural reef

that used to be here.

Right. Under the surface there used to be

this whole landscape that's not there anymore.

[Brad] A whole world.

The whole world, and it took about a hundred years

once Europeans arrived in New York City

to harvest all the wild oysters.

[Brad gasps]

So oysters in New York Harbor filter the water,

stabilize the bottom,

provide food and habitat for hundreds of other species,

and can play a role in protecting the shores from storms.

So you guys are trying to bring that back to these waters

which used to be fertile with it?

Our mission is to do all that work

through public education initiatives.

You know, we're developing curricula for middle schools,

we're doing teacher training programs.

And those students actually collect data that helps

inform our restoration work. Cool. Well, how can I,

can I help you build a reef?

Or how can I... Put me to work today, Pete!

So, our project for today is

we're going to fill some bags with shell.

And so we have some coconut fiber bags here

that we're going to try out and

see if they hold up as well as the plastic bags

and then we'll try them for an installation

we're doing in Jamaica Bay.

[Brad] A little side by side,

little experimental project here.

[Pete] Check this out.

[Brad] Damn!

How long did it take you guys to figure that one out?

Someone was still holding the bag for a while!

We're not the only people doing this

and so there's some best practices that we followed.

You know, one bag at a time, bud.

[Pete] In a normal year, you know,

we'll have volunteer days three days a week.

So, normally it's more than just

two people doing this work.

[Brad] Yeah, I bet.

[scraping]

[Brad laughs]

Nailed it!

You mentioned these were made out of coconut husk, huh?

You know, ultimately the goal is

to have a sustaining reef that grows and builds on itself.

And so the question is, do the coconut fiber bags

last long enough to allow the reef to kind of transition

into having its own structure.

I think that's the beautiful part of these, right?

Where it does its job, breaks down, and then

you just have a thriving, natural oyster bed.

[Pete] All of our projects are research projects.

And so we're trying to learn the best way to

restore oysters.

So we have a number of different techniques

and we have these gabions,

which are larger steel structures.

And those are bigger, heavier,

they won't move around.

[Brad] I'm assuming that's what these are, or...?

[Pete] Yeah. And so you can see a lot of our process here,

too, because they change year to year.

Students at the Harbor School Ocean Engineering program

do some design work

and then students in the welding program put them together.

And then these are all built by volunteers.

Everyone's learning, practicing a trade,

while restoring the waters.

We could be using

[Brad] cement to build restructure- Sure.

but we're not because there's a market

in New York City for welders.

So we design our reef structures to leverage those skills.

Oh man, that's a beautiful thing you got going on, Pete.

[cheerful guitar]

[boat noise]

Get the lavender!

It's so pretty. It smells so good, too.

All right, Pete. So we're down here at the pier,

here at your dock over by your facility.

What do you guys do here?

We call this our eco dock

and it's a multi-use floating dock.

And when we move this in and filled it with oysters

it became the largest population of oysters

in New York Harbor in a hundred years.

[Brad] Wow.

And it's interesting if you scuba dive here

in the cove and swim towards the oysters

you can watch the water get clearer and clearer

the closer you get to the oysters hanging onto the dock.

From this giant filtration system you guys installed?

Exactly.

Under all these grates are oysters

and we can actually pick up one of the trays.

[Brad] All right. Cool.

[Pete] You just want to grab it like I am.

Just grab the little bars

because it's pretty good at pinching fingers.

And just set it down right here.

And this is pretty typical.

Right? All the trash!

Every time it rains in New York

all the trash gets pushed off the street, into the water.

[ Brad] You can push the garbage by me.

Here, I'll clean this.

[wet scrubbing]

Just going to pull them up, huh?

So how old are these oysters, if you had a guess?

[Pete] Just a couple months.

[Brad] So these are the shells

that you had curing in that lot that we were in

and then this is what grows on them: little oysters.

[Pete] Little oysters.

[Brad] In a year, the shell will- Take over?

[Pete] look like a ball. You won't be able to see the

[Brad] post-shell- Wow!

[Pete] anymore. You know,

they haven't been in the water that long

but every square inch of the tray

is covered in living things.

This is a species of tunicate,

called Golden Star Tunicate.

And there's the Sea Grapes, right?

[Brad] Yeah! You're creating a structure, right?

And that's the foundation for life.

Yeah, the trees in the forest.

[Brad] Cause like what, without this structure

on the bottom, what's down there?

Just mud? It's just flat

and featureless.

So, there's nowhere to hide and nothing to eat.

[Brad] Just dead.

But then you put an oyster reef down

and come back just in a couple of weeks,

and that same spot

there'll be thousands of Mud Snails, little Mud Crabs,

Green Crabs, Blue Crabs-

[Brad] Oh, wow. You know,

sometimes horseshoe crabs.

[Brad] That's amazing.

So how many you got down there on this dock?

[Pete] This system can hold about half a million

big oysters, and you know,

many times that very small oysters.

[Brad] Wow. That's amazing.

[Pete] One way we work with schools

is to provide them with one of these cages

at a site near their school.

And then there's a whole sixth through eighth grade

science curriculum that goes along with it.

[Brad] I'm finding...

I mean, there's all types of little critters on here.

Found a little snail.

[Pete] So this is actually an oyster drill.

[Brad] Oyster drill?

[Pete] Yup. They drill holes in the top of the shell

and then melt the meat with sulfuric acid

and suck out the juice.

[Brad] Good God!

Like a horror movie!

[creepy music]

And then they suck out the liquid oyster?

[Pete] Yeah.

[Brad] Yeah, delicious.

[Pete] So, it's a lot like what we looked at

down on the dock.

You still have the same thing.

You have one shell that was collected from a restaurant

and whatever this is, 10 oysters that are growing on it.

[Brad] Oh, wow! You can start to see

how you get that three-dimensional habitat.

And now, if you were a little bait fish, I mean look,

who wouldn't want to go hide in there? You know?

[Pete laughs]

It looks like a reef.

[Pete] It looks like coral reef. Right.

And what's this growth on here? Some type of...

[Pete] So that's called a Golden Star Tunicate.

Surprisingly, it's a chordate.

So, it's actually more closely related to you

than the oyster is.

[Brad] Really? [dramatic music]

[Pete] But when they're in the water they puff up

and they suck water through.

Yeah! Look at that! Can you see that?

[Pete] Can you get in on that thing? It's really cool.

[Brad] [dramatic music] That's wild.

Oh, crab!

[Pete] Get him!

Look at that little guy!

[Pete] Mud Crab.

[Brad] He was just hanging out in there.

I mean, this is kind of a perfect example

of re-introducing life back into the water.

[Pete] That's the goal.

So we have several hundred of these

at 50 sites all over New York City.

[Brad] Oh really? So you can imagine,

if you're an 11-year-old kid,

who's like, never thought about there being life

in New York Harbor,

pulling one of those up for the first time

[Brad] and seeing- Crabs!

[Pete] the crabs and shrimp and fish there.

[Brad] Oh my God!

I mean, I have a little kid.

We have two little kids and they would go nuts,

pulling up stuff like that.

Well, I think we can get a...

Go check out some oysters that you might have

out in the New York City waters?

[Brad] Yeah. Let's get on the boat. Cool.

[boat engine revving]

Such a cool way to see the city!

[Pete] Well, and you realize...

Look at how vulnerable the city is to the water!

[Brad] Barely out of the water.

Soccer ball!

Someone's garbage!

[Pete] I have so many soccer balls!

[Brad] Really? Yeah.

[Brad] [Brad cackles] Is that another one?

[Pete] I think so, right? I'll get it.

All right.

For the kids, you know?

[Pete] Great job.

Cleaning the waters.

You know, one oyster, one soccer ball at a time, bud.

[gulls squawking]

[Pete] We have an oyster nursery back up in here.

But this, this is a combined sewer overflow pipe.

So, there's 430 all around the city that overflow rainwater

and untreated household wastewater out into the harbor

every time it rains.

And so that pipe alone

averages 660 million gallons of untreated

[Brad] household wastewater- Geez!

[Pete] every year.

In the summer, it gets real [beep] weird in here.

Like there's like bizarre colors

and just like bacteria and other stuff growing.

It's pretty gross.

See how weird the water looks?

Yeah! It does have a chalkiness.

[Pete] And this is like very mild chalky water.

[Brad] It gets bad. It gets like [beep].

It looks like a milkshake. It's disgusting.

We first put this oyster nursery in here to see

whether or not the oysters

[Brad] could survive. Sure.

[Pete] So the oysters

[Brad] in the- Really?

[Pete] nursery here, not only survive

but their offspring are offspring

[Brad] from other oysters- They're repopulating.

[Pete] are attaching to these bulkheads here.

[Brad] Amazing work.

[Pete] See, right there's

[Brad] a bunch of them. Yeah and you can see

there's little, little, light oysters that-

[Pete] Here's a bunch of them.

[Brad] Yep, there's a ton of them.

So, the larvae spread out just like what you guys do

[Pete] back at your facility. Yup.

[Brad] And they look and they find this wall,

and that's what they

[Pete] anchored onto. Right.

[Brad] Beautiful.

The Navy yard had done a study

and determined this barge basin to be sort of lifeless.

So, we were allowed to put the nursery in here.

And what happened is,

they've created this whole ecosystem in here.

[Brad] Yeah I noticed you've got some buoys set up.

And you know, what do you got going on over here?

What are we doing?

[Pete] It's different from a reef site

because the oysters are growing off the bottom

because of the low dissolved oxygen.

The oysters won't survive on the bottom.

[Brad] I'll tell you what though:

[Pete] pretty decent clarity. That's what they do.

They're removing particles from the water

and helping to clarify the water.

And we pull them out in August and September.

Every tray has a Blue Crab, this big in it.

[Brad] Really? And there's

black fish and shrimp just like, flying out of the cages.

This was probably extremely fertile

waters, fishing grounds.

There was probably crabs and lobsters,

[beep] fish everywhere.

[Pete] This used to be a Wallabout Creek,

which went right up into Clinton Hills.

So, this would have been all shallows and salt marsh,

totally full of animals.

[Brad] You know, I can close my eyes

and you can picture how it once was.

And then you open your eyes and we're

in the middle of New York City,

There's shipping containers.

I mean, what, were in the Navy,

the Brooklyn Navy Yards, right?

So, on top of when it rains,

there's all this human waste.

Now those were also,

you're also combating 200 years of commercial runoff, right?

The oysters can't compete with a combined sewer

overflowing into the harbor.

But the more people who realize

that there actually is this important ecosystem here

that we can restore, that's the real impact

the oysters are going to have on the water.

Because building a constituency for the harbor,

you know, of people who are new, don't think it's

acceptable to pour raw sewage into your,

you know, on your resource.

It takes a city to rebuild a harbor.

Right.

That should be on your guys',

on your t-shirt, man. [Pete laughs]

[cash register rings] Cause there's no more truth

to it than that.

The more people who know about it,

the more people who care and help out,

the better chance we have of being successful.

And I mean, not only do we need to because we have to,

but I mean, doesn't it seem like a much nicer place

to live, too?

Like if this was beautiful, if I could bring my kid here,

catch a fish or go crabbing or you know, or go swimming!

That sounds amazing!

You know, I've seen pods of dolphins in New York Harbor.

I've seen giant flocks of Gannet,

you know, huge schools of menhaden,

a whale,

seals.

All that stuff still exists in the harbor

and if we just give it a little bit of a chance

and like help it out a little bit.

[Brad] It wants to come back!

It wants to come back and it will come back.

But we can't just, you know, ignore it

and use it as a system of waste conveyance.

You know, it's never going to look like it did

400 years ago. Right.

That type of abundance doesn't exist anywhere on Earth

anymore because it's been removed by people.

But we can get

New York Harbor back to- Coexisting.

Coexisting to a place where you're going over

the Manhattan bridge on the train and you look out

and you see, you know a giant flock of terns

eating bait fish. Sounds amazing.

That's not, that's not

out of the question. Right.

It just takes a little bit of...

Yeah. It just needs a little help.

Well let's, let's go tool around the city a bit.

Yeah? Let's go check out the water.

[upbeat music]

Oh, you got to get the guy waving, dude!

[splashing]

[Brad laughs] Sorry, Kev.

So Kara, um, we lost Kevin.

[group laughing]

[blooper reel beep] All right, Pete, before we go,

I have to ask.

You know, it sounds...

I'd like to know...

I'd like to believe I could maybe guess it

but like why Billion Oyster Project?

Where'd you come up with the name?

So, originally we created Billion Oyster Project

as Billion Oysters NYC

as the aquatic analog of Million Trees NYC.

Oh, cool!

You know, have a big public-private partnership

to restore New York Harbor.

But a billion oysters,

a billion live oysters would filter

the standing volume of the Upper Bay,

would process that volume once every three days.

So, that sounds nice.

Oh, wow.

A billion oysters, that's what it would take.

How many have you guys done?

About 45 million.

Oh, wow! No kidding!

We have only 955 million

to go. Job security!

Do you think you'll hit it one day?

I think we'll definitely get there.

We have a new facility that can produce

a hundred million oysters a year

that we put into play last- Oh wow.

this past spring, but it's not supposed to be easy.

You know? So, the idea- Right.

of a billion oysters, it's supposed to be hard.

It's supposed to be ambitious.

It's supposed to be- It's an outstanding target.

meaningful, outstanding target

and it's gonna take everybody

working together to make that happen.

I love it. Well, good, man.

I hope to contribute. And I ain't kidding.

I want to come down with the kids and fill some bags

with them when you guys are running volunteering.

That sounds great.

See you on Governors Island.

[hopeful music]

[boat horn honking]

[Brad] Huge thanks to Billion Oyster Project,

Pete and everyone, for bringing us out.

You know, for me, oysters have always been

such an amazing food source

and being able to use this platform

to showcase the importance of them

as a tool in this ecosystem is so important.

If we just continue to treat these waters and this earth

as a dumping ground, as a wasting ground, we're done, man!

And you know what? We're getting pretty close.

So, you know, I do believe there's plenty of time left

but we have to start now.

And kids are getting involved.

People are getting involved.

The restaurants are getting involved.

The community is getting involved.

It takes a city [cash register rings]

to rebuild the harbor.

So, hope you guys learned something.

I certainly did.

Thanks to the Billion Oyster Project

for all the work they do.

And we'll see you guys next time. Bon Appétit.

There's one thing they say about Captain Pete:

He's got upper management written all over him.

You know, one day you might be Executive Director

with this attitude.

[Pete] I'd rather just drive boats for film crews.

[group laughs]

[uplifting jazz music]

[blooper reel beep]