Pages tagged Restoration
Arcade
The flat oyster of Arcade, at the head of the Ría de Vigo. Culture in the inner ría was lost decades ago; 103,500 seed were laid in August 2026 to rebuild it.
Quilcene
A Hood Canal bay that once held about 100 acres of solid Olympia oyster beds. Pacifics replaced them; a 2018 survey found the natives scattered but still there.
Rossmore
A Cork Harbour farm founded in 1969 to breed native oysters in ponds. Bonamia took 14 million; decades of selective breeding brought the natives back to market in 2023.
Australia's Lost Oyster Reefs
Port Phillip Bay, Coffin Bay and Wagonga Inlet: how Australia's native oyster reefs were dredged and burned for lime, and how three communities are putting them back.
Rebuilt Oyster Reefs, Measured
Tred Avon, Pamlico Sound, Tampa Bay and the Indian River Lagoon: four reef-building projects in the US, what each one built, and what its own monitoring found.
Colchester Native
The Colne's flat oyster, held by the borough of Colchester since 1189, celebrated at an annual feast, and now at the heart of England's largest native oyster restoration.
Lynnhaven
The Virginia Beach river whose oysters once reached presidents' tables. Condemned for shellfish in 2006, it is now more than half open, and nearly all its oysters are farmed.
Oyster Reefs as Sea Walls
Living shorelines use oyster reefs instead of bulkheads. The research shows they can keep pace with rising seas, and exposes a trade-off between protecting the shore and growing oysters.
The Billion Oyster Project
New York Harbor once held some 350 square miles of oyster beds. A decade into bringing them back, here is what the monitoring data say is working, and what is not yet.
Does Shell Recycling Work?
The half-shell boom broke the old loop that returned shell to the reefs. Recycling programs are rebuilding it, but they cover only part of what restoration needs.
Bringing Back the Flat Oyster
Europe's native oyster reefs once covered millions of hectares. A continent-wide effort is now rebuilding them, one disease-screened oyster at a time.
Oysters and Coastal Ecosystems
Oysters filter, remove nitrogen and build reef. Before overharvest, Chesapeake oysters could filter the whole Bay in about three days. Today it takes most of a year.
Olympia
The small native oyster of North America's Pacific coast, nearly wiped out by 1900s harvest and pollution, now farmed in small numbers and restored.
Angasi
Southern Australia's native flat oyster, stripped from its reefs in the 1800s and now grown by a handful of Tasmanian farms for a short winter season.
Apalachicola
Florida's great tonged oyster, lost in the 2012 collapse after years of low river flow. A two-month season returned in 2026 on about 500 acres.