By BRIAN THOMPSON of NBC New York
NEW YORK - Three million juvenile oysters are growing under a specially made dock at Governors Island, the biggest concentration of the bivalves in New York Harbor in probably 100 years or so.
And in a matter of weeks, they will be replanted at six difference sites around the harbor. The return of oysters, if this works, would come after more than a century of pollution and over harvesting devastated what once fed the immigrants of New York.
“They filter out any bad stuff … and keep the harbor clean,” said Hanaa Butcher, 16, and a student with the New York Harbor School on Governors Island.
Butcher and a couple of dozen other students at the school have been involved for months in growing the oysters, monitoring their health, and now preparing for a massive planting on the half a dozen living room-sized reefs being built by the Army Corps of Engineers.
“We have a vision of a World Class harbor estuary,” said the Army Corps New York Region commander, Colonel John Boule. The Army Corps is building the reefs in shallow waters off Governors Island, Staten Island, Hastings-on-Hudson, Bay Ridge Flats (Brooklyn) and Soundview Park (The Bronx).
A sixth reef is being sponsored by the New York City DEP in Jamaica Bay.“Certainly we will not be able to slurp them with champagne in the near future,” explained Clay Hiles, Executive Director of the Hudson River Foundation.
Learn more about the restoration of the Hudson estuary
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