Over 75,000 oysters were delivered to four different sites across Long Island on Tuesday, July 22, as part of the Coalition to Save Hempstead Harbor’s Community Oyster Gardening program.
The Community Oyster Gardening program, which is in its fourth year, allows volunteers to raise oysters that will ultimately be released in Hempstead Harbor. The oysters are utilized because they can improve water quality, the group said.
“Oysters are really awesome in the fact that they are excellent filter feeders, so they can really help improve the water quality of an area,” said the program project manager, Sarah Stromski.
Oysters feed by pumping water through their bodies, filtering phytoplankton and bacteria, and improving the surrounding water quality. On average, one adult oyster can filter up to fifty gallons of water.
Those used in this program are eastern oysters, which on average are three to five inches in length and can live up to 20 years.
The oysters, known as spat-on-shell or juvenile, were delivered to cages in Tappen Beach Marina, North Hempstead Beach Park, the Hempstead Harbour Club and Sea Cliff Yacht Club.
The oysters will be looked after by around 130 volunteers across the four sites. Volunteers will clean both the oysters and their cages and measure their growth, providing a hands-on opportunity for residents to learn about the benefits that oysters can have within an ecosystem.
In a statement, Stromski attributed the number of volunteers, the largest in the program’s history, to the fact that the community truly cares about the local environment.
“By increasing awareness and providing information about issues facing the harbor, the hope is that all of these volunteers, who are community members living around Hempstead Harbor, will take what they learned through this program and apply it to other areas of conservation,” she said.
The oysters will be released into the harbor at the coalition’s conservation management area at the end of September.
Divers from the Cornell Cooperative Extension in Suffolk County, where the oysters were initially delivered, will monitor their health once they are planted in the harbor.
The oysters will continue to reproduce in the protected area, increasing their population and diversifying the ecosystem by creating mini reefs as they mature, which attract other animals to the area.
According to Stromski, this “promotes biodiversity and ultimately resiliency of the harbor.”
This batch of oysters was funded by a 2022 Community Project Grant sponsored by U.S. Rep. Tom Suozzi and administered by the Environmental Protection Agency. Many of the Coalition to Save Hempstead Harbor’s programs rely on community donations in addition to grants, Stromski said.
The coalition runs other programs dedicated to conserving and protecting the harbor, including water monitoring and horseshoe crab monitoring programs. Their purpose is to identify and eliminate environmental threats in and around Hempstead Harbor.
Speaking on the program, Stromski said that “with increased awareness and education, we can all work together to restore Hempstead Harbor’s shellfish populations and other resources.”
