With 50,000 shellfish planted, experts hope for a new reef off Oyster Bay

Oyster Bay planted 50,000 adult oysters in town waters this week as part of a national nonprofit program that buys shellfish from local growers and donates them to municipalities to help create reefs that bolster oyster populations. 

The Nature Conservancy and The Pew Charitable Trusts run the program, which is known as Supporting Oyster Aquaculture and Restoration or SOAR. The goal of the program is to support oyster growers and improve waterways by placing shellfish in reef restoration projects throughout the country. 

Municipalities in eight states are participating in SOAR, which kicked off last year with $6.3 million in funding from a $3 million federal grant and a philanthropic donation, according to its organizers.

Six Long Island growers contributed oysters locally for the project before the submersion of the shellfish in local harbor waters. The underwater plantings started Monday and continued Tuesday. 

Rebekah Borgert, The Nature Conservancy's SOAR coordinator, sifted through one of the containers of adult oysters Tuesday morning that a local farm dropped off at the town's shellfish hatchery at the east end of Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Park. She counted and measured their dark shells before placing them in another bin. 

Workers then hauled those containers to a long tube where the shells got a freshwater bath. Soon after, town employees drove a boat to an undisclosed nearby location to plant the oysters underwater.

Borgert said the SOAR program began during the pandemic as a way for oyster farmers to sell shellfish when restaurants were closed. The town also took part in that iteration of SOAR, but those involved in the project said a multilayered approach to rebuilding the bay's shellfish population is needed to yield long-term improvements. 

“It’s not going to be quick,” Borgert added.

Friends of the Bay, an Oyster Bay nonprofit, was among groups that accepted shipments of oysters and prepared them for placement in the water.

Christine Suter, the group's executive director, picked out dead oysters from the donations Tuesday as she explained how placing live shellfish in a protected area on the bay bottom will allow them to form “a natural oyster reef.” 

“This is really just the beginning of that effort,” she said, adding that the population needs to grow over time.

Zack Greenberg, an official with The Pew Charitable Trusts, said the SOAR program will buy additional shipments of adult oysters from local growers that are expected to be delivered to Oyster Bay this fall, followed by more in 2025. 

The town’s shell recycling program, which collects oyster shells from local eateries, was used to establish a hard bottom for the adult oysters to attach to before the shipments arrived, said Oyster Bay Supervisor Joseph Saladino. That made a “more attractive” habitat for the oysters that were planted, he said.

Saladino said the SOAR program also will supply three million oyster larvae to the town’s shellfish hatchery that later will be deposited into the water. The Nature Conservancy said those larvae haven't been delivered yet.   

Saladino said the combination of new adult and young oysters is “how we get Oyster Bay back to its heyday of a plethora of oysters … and a very healthy environment.”

Other efforts, like a Stony Brook University study that is looking at the best places to build oyster reefs in Oyster Bay and Cold Spring harbors, are also underway.

In addition, the town has plans to build a new shellfish hatchery capable of producing 100 million oysters and clams annually.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misstated the name of the program.

By Joseph Ostapiuk

joseph.ostapiuk@newsday.com@OstapiukJ