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Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters
- fafl 8y agoWouldn't this invite some kind of oyster-predator or oyster-disease? Biodiversity would be more sustainable ...
- ashelmire 8y agoApparently there used to be trillions of oysters in the area. Turns out humans were the predator.
- pixl97 8y agoHumans reduced their numbers, but human pollution is what wiped them out.
- nextweek2 8y agoThis is alluded to in the article, they want wild oysters to join the population. Most likely to increase genetic diversity. I would imagine this is a good start, people can identify with oysters and they can then start to use funding to diversify the biosphere down the line.
- SideburnsOfDoom 8y ago> they want wild oysters to join the population. I assumed that these oysters were grown by locating a rare wild oyster, or two, and having them spawn in captivity, producing huge numbers of offspring in a generation or two. So they would be "wild oysters" genetically speaking. Although less genetically diverse than the whole wild population.
- exitcode00 8y agoImagine if the project was given the 5 billion tax dollars handed to Jeff Bezos instead of a measly 4.5 million... This is why the environments a disaster - not because you decide to buy an SUV
- thaumasiotes 8y ago> Imagine if the project was given the 5 billion tax dollars handed to Jeff Bezos instead of a measly 4.5 million... The $4.5 million is money New York has to spend out of revenue. Spending it lowers the amount of money New York has. Neither of those is true of $5 billion in tax incentives. Look at the cash flow.
- exitcode00 8y agoWho cares where it comes from. Tax payers are out 5 billion does it matter how?
- abtinf 8y agoI believe the point of the gp is that the money isn’t coming from anywhere. No one is out $5B. There is no budget line item you could point to that identifies the expenditure “$5B for Bezos”.
- exitcode00 8y agoIt's all semantics - I don't understand why people want to defend a multi-billion dollar corporation, but, lets say, that NYC didn't write off 5 billion to Amazon. Could the city have budgeted more for the failing subway and nasty harbor given that they received more in taxes? Maybe.. if they really cared for the city. All these corporations do with their profits and tax-incentives is hoard them overseas and spend them on stock buy-backs. https://www.barrons.com/articles/2018-record-stock-buybacks-51545361596 https://www.barrons.com/articles/2018-record-stock-buybacks-...
- autokad 8y ago> "lets say, that NYC didn't write off 5 billion to Amazon. Could the city have budgeted more for the failing subway and nasty harbor given that they received more in taxes? Maybe" You do realize NYC is not collecting less taxes because Amazon came? If Amazon goes to another city, they collect 0. if Amazon gets a tax break, they collect 0. now you could argue that Amazon provides some sort of extra burden on city resources, though they would also collect more taxes from the employees and other services rendered.
- cgb223 8y agoSo uh, how edible will these billion oysters be considering the crap they’re filtering out of the river..?
- darkpuma 8y agoThere is a profit motive for those involved to underplay the toxicity of these oysters.
- gonesilent 8y agoWhats in the clam chowder?....fish
- samstave 8y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQ_JyIgjwkc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQ_JyIgjwkc
- 2muchcoffeeman 8y agoWell, I read the article. They are not suggesting that you should eat the oysters ...
- erikpukinskis 8y agoMy general understanding about bioremediation is the material has to be removed and put in a landfill.
- darkpuma 8y ago> "Billion Oyster Project partners with more than 70 restaurants in New York City. The businesses save up their oyster shells rather than tossing them, and a collection partner for the Billion Oyster Project rounds them up and carts them off to Governors Island, a small island due east of the Statue of Liberty." It seems unclear to me whether their deal with restaurants is limited to collecting shells from restaurants or includes distributing oysters to restaurants as well. Hopefully it's only the former. One hopes the oysters being served are not local.
- ako 8y agoWe should all be freaking out about what we’ve done to the earth, but nobody seems to really be able to compare it within historical context. We just dont know what it was like just a century ago. I’m always surprised by facts like in this story and similar like https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2014/02/05/257046530/big-fish-stories-getting-littler https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2014/02/05/257046530/b... And https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/nyregion/new-york-city-smog.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/nyregion/new-york-city-sm...
- erikpukinskis 8y agoFreaking out doesn’t seem to be helping? A lot of people have been freaking out for a long time. If anything, it seems to lead to a combination of despondency in allies and stubbornness in enemies. I’d advise working on solutions to specific problems, calmly and deliberately.
- faitswulff 8y agoI think op means we should have zero enemies in fixing our environment. If we were truly all on the same page and freaking out, taking meaningful action would be a lot easier.
- ThomPete 8y agoFreaking out is the opposite of what we need. I am not worried about the consequences being so severe we cant handle them, there are other quite scarier scenarios. Freaking out gives us the opposite of solutions,just a lot of noise and premature solutions such as focusing on inferior solutions such as solar. This is the right way to do it, deal with the problems you see and can deal with.
- ako 8y agoThe biggest problem is that people don’t see the problem, because they can’t see it in historical context.
- yursky 8y agohttps://99percentinvisible.org/episode/oyster-tecture/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/oyster-tecture/ is an excellent podcast about this project. It summarizes the history of the ecosystem and the intent behind the project very well. It's amazing how much of an oyster mecca new york used to be...
- onetimemanytime 8y agoI hope this is as simple as adding oysters...
- janlaureys 8y agoI'm a simple man: I see 99pi, I upvote.
- _memes 8y agoNice meme.
- jimkri 8y agoThanks for the link, I had no idea New York was such a popular oyster city. Also led me to the Build Oyster Project on Governors Island
- uijl 8y agoIn the Netherlands we, as hydraulic engineers, are working on something called 'Building with Nature'. This is a perfect example of that. If you guys like this, check out https://www.ecoshape.org/en/ https://www.ecoshape.org/en/.
- spiderfarmer 8y agoAs a part of that there are several projects underway trying to get oysters to return, using artificial reefs: https://www.platteoester.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Overview-flat-oyster-restoration-NL-dec-2018.png https://www.platteoester.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Overv...
- onetimemanytime 8y agoQuestion: Do oysters clean the water by "eating" the pollutants ? If so, after oysters die, wont that pollutant still be in the water? Or is it in a stable form and does not harm us.
- giorgioz 8y agoI think old oysters become rock-like and sediment while new oysters grow on top of them. "3. In the wild, oysters set on (or attach to) old oyster shells. When oysters grow in the wild in oyster reefs, they typically attach to old oyster shells (for the calcium carbonate — see above). Because of this they tend to grow in clusters and one on top of the other. This is also why wild oysters typically have “gnarly shapes,” says Chris, instead of the nice round shape and deep cup you associate with farmed oysters." https://www.thekitchn.com/island-creek-oysters-grower-tour-192689 https://www.thekitchn.com/island-creek-oysters-grower-tour-1...
- pwagland 8y agoGood question! My understanding is that a lot of the pollutants actually end up in the shell, so they don't magically disappear, but they are pulled out of the water, and they end up in the hard sediment on the sea floor.
- gdubs 8y agoThere was a TED talk on this idea a while back, and the answer to when can the oysters be eaten was “around 2050”. https://www.ted.com/talks/kate_orff_oysters_as_architecture/transcript https://www.ted.com/talks/kate_orff_oysters_as_architecture/...
- giorgioz 8y agoIn Italy mussel shells are famous to purify the water. It's important to remember though that mussels growing on very dirty waters (like sewers outgoing in the sea) might be contaminated and are not edible. https://e360.yale.edu/features/how_mussel_farming_could_help_to_clean_fouled_waters https://e360.yale.edu/features/how_mussel_farming_could_help...
- paulhilbert 8y agoObligatory 99% invisible reference: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/oyster-tecture/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/oyster-tecture/
- maxerickson 8y agoIt worked for the Great Lakes. :(
- raverbashing 8y agoZebra mussels might be up to the task as well, apparently they are an invasive species, they will live anywhere and will eat anything (But they are a freshwater species)
- philg_jr 8y agoAs long as they don't migrate over to where people swim. Those things are insanely sharp and dangerous.
- ThirdFoundation 8y agoI grew up near Portage Lakes in NE Ohio. For much of my childhood, the water was a little murky, the seaweed wasn't too thick, and the lakes were pretty harmless (and fun) to swim in. Sometime around 2001, zebra mussels were accidentally introduced (the common theory I've read is by attaching to a boat that had been docked in Lake Erie prior to being brought back to Portage Lakes). The zebra mussels spread very fast and the lake noticeably changed. The water became much clearer. As a result, more sunlight could penetrate the water, and it could penetrate deeper, so much more seaweed grew. Personally, I hated them because they made swimming at our local park more dangerous. Their shells are sharp and will cut human feet pretty easily. That being said, in hindsight they did appear to clean up the water a lot. I wonder if they actually made the lake healthier for humans to swim in and live near as a result?
- bartkappenburg 8y agoHere's a (pretty recent) interview, in an episode of 'Tell me something I don't know', with the organization behind this project on Freakonomics: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/tmsidk-guarnaschelli-2018/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/tmsidk-guarnaschelli-2018/
- pseudolus 8y agoMark Kurlansky (of Cod and Salt fame) wrote a book "The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell" which detailed the history of oysters and NYC [0]. Apparently at one time more than 700 million oysters a year were being harvested. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Big-Oyster-History-Half-Shell/dp/0345476395/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=mark+kurlansky&qid=1548077538&sr=8-3 https://www.amazon.com/Big-Oyster-History-Half-Shell/dp/0345...