Hacker News Reader

Comment by ck2 | Hacker News Reader

vaguely related I read a fascinating story the other day about basically garbage dumping of leftover oyster/clam shells being used to re-seed a marine ecosystem off the Florida Keys

* https://www.yahoo.com/news/science/articles/florida-dumped-h...

View on HN

they were doing that in New York as well if I'm not mistaken

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion_Oyster_Project - Different effort, this one is about putting out living oysters, not just shells as GP was talking about.

And to be clear, in GP's link, living oysters do show up, but they weren't put there deliberately (the shells and every other development provided the larvae with places to grow and establish themselves). The NY project started with oyster larvae placed on discarded shells to deliberately create the new environment with an oyster population.

did this start as just shells? Because I remember reading something a long time ago about this and they were just putting shells in the bay in metal cages.

Amazing that they're actually progressing on a billion oysters. That's incredible. I wonder when it becomes self sustaining, and just reaches a billion on it's own.

> As part of the strategy, discarded oyster shells from over 70 New York restaurants are collected and left outside for a year to be naturally cleansed of organic matter. Baby oysters are then placed on the shells by students at New York Harbor School, a maritime-focused public high school located on Governors Island. [10]

yeah, I read it. But what I remember is that they weren't doing the baby oyster thing, but just collecting the shells and putting them in cages so that they don't float away, and then dropping them into the bottom of the Hudson. It's definitely been over a decade since I read the article though, so could be mistaken.

NYC even dumps their old subway cars to create coral reefs:

https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-subway-cars-turning...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com