"Their destinations were a series of breakwaters a few hundred yards offshore. The breakwaters are essentially man-made islands of jagged rocks, intended to stave off beach erosion that's been ongoing for decades. If it turns out they can host oyster reefs, too, all the better. Whales and dolphins have begun returning to New York Harbor; why not oysters, which, in these parts, once numbered in the billions?"
"They pulled around to the lee side of a so-called reef street, an arm of rocks extending perpendicularly from the central spine, and were joined by Pippa Brashear, the resilience principal at Scape, the landscape-architecture firm that led the design of the breakwaters. She noted that the individual rocks, each as heavy as a pyramid stone, had been carefully placed, rather than dumped, to maximize stability and to create the nooks and crannies favored by marine life: mussels, crabs, sponges."
A fleet of kayaks set out from Staten Island to inspect offshore breakwaters for oysters. The breakwaters are man-made rock structures built to prevent decades-long beach erosion and may also support oyster reefs. Marine mammals like whales and dolphins have been returning to New York Harbor, and oysters once existed there in the billions. Oysters filter large volumes of water but remain unsafe to eat from city waters. The Billion Oyster Project has seeded some breakwaters with larvae while researchers search for natural recruits that may recolonize the structures, which already host gulls, cormorants, mussels, crabs, and sponges.
Read at The New Yorker
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