Dinner castoffs boost bay
Hampton volunteers help recycle empty oyster shells in an effort to create sanctuary reefs
HAMPTON — Many people’s involvement with oyster shells ends when they finish eating the meat inside — but that’s not true for Claire Neubert, George Corwin and Kathy Rogers.
They are among the Hampton volunteers who want to make sure the shells are used to create sanctuary reefs, which will provide a haven for new oysters to grow, while helping to keep the Chesapeake Bay clean.
Earlier this month, the group along with representatives from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation met at Sam Rust Seafood in Hampton and hoisted several bushels of the shells retrieved from restaurants. Some had been placed in bins at the seafood wholesaler, others were collected from partnering restaurants.
From there, they will be taken to Virginia Beach to ready them for restoration.
“(The goal is) to make sure
there’s the bay is healthy, clean and sustainable,” said Neubert, who has a few oyster gardens. “You don’t have to be a scientist to be somebody who cares about a healthy ... environment.”
The effort is a part of the foundation’s restoration program that began in 2001, but in recent years it has gained momentum in Hampton Roads. In Hampton, for example, Fullers Raw Bar on Mellen Street has recycled approximately 390,000 oyster shells since 2019, foundation officials say.
The restaurant recycled enough shells for 472 bushels, which would be ample to seed nearly 4 acres of sanctuary reefs with about 3.9 million young oysters, foundation spokesman Kenny Fletcher said in an email.
In the past, oyster shells mostly were discarded in heaping mounds; some were collected for landscaping, but most ended up in the landfill.
“And when they go in the trash, that’s not really doing any good. The more we can get (them) back to be able to rebuild the oyster populations and put back in the water to create that habitat again (the better),” Peyton Mowery, an oyster outreach coordinator, said.
The shells are a good surface for baby oysters to attach themselves. On average, at least 10 baby oysters can anchor onto a shell and help create a natural habitat for fish, crabs and other marine life, Fletcher wrote in an email.
On a recent sunny Thursday, Neubert shoveled the empty oyster shells, many crusted with baked on cheese and dried cocktail sauce, into a bushel basket.
Once in a holding spot in Virginia Beach, they will be left outside so the rain can wash them clean.
“You’ll see there is a little bit of the oyster. There can be cheese and spinach and all that kind of stuff left on them,” Mowery said. “By sitting them out in the sun, we’re making sure we don’t have any of that organic material on there and making sure we aren’t possibly transmitting any diseases by just throwing them into the water.”
Corwin, among the volunteers who pick up shells twice weekly, said most of the region’s tribu
taries do not have enough hard surfaces for baby oysters and larvae to land on to start building a shell.
During the summer is when the major work happens. That’s when conditions are best for the baby oysters, or “spat” to attach themselves to the shells in huge tanks. By next year, the work of setting the spat will take place on a new oyster barge that will be located on the Lynnhaven River, Fletcher said.
The oysters are also good for help maintaining the health of the Chesapeake Bay because
when the oysters feed, they filter the water.
“Oysters are very picky about what they eat. They’re kind of picking through like, ooh, I want to eat (these) algae, I don’t want to eat that sediment,” Mowery said. “And whatever they don’t want to eat, they’ll package up into these little tiny tight bundles called pseudo feces, and they’re able to deposit the pseudo feces on the sea floor.”