The True Cost Of Losing America's Wild Oysters | True Cost | Business Insider

Louisiana's world famous wild oysters are getting harder and harder to come by in fact almost all of America's wild oyster populations have vanished and the ones that are left face increasingly powerful storms as well as oil spills and disease every single one of those things on that list a different one hits us every single year oysters the millions of tons of oysters served up in restaurants every year are mostly farmed but oysters are not just for eating they're also essential for the environment they build reefs and filter water and losing them leaves places like Louisiana worse off in the fight against erosion and pollution we need more oysters in the water whether they're on the bottom or in cages period they just do so much for the environment conservationists think they can restore America's wild oyster reefs it's really not hard to imagine recovering oysters as a habitat and a fishery in the same place at the same time so what's the true cost of losing America's wild oysters and is it too late to bring them back take a look at this picture from the turn of the 20th century these people are standing on a mountain of oyster shells a regular site in coastal American cities about 130 years ago between 1880 and 1910 fishermen were harvesting 160 million pounds of wild oyster meat per year that's more than every other country in the world combined and nearly seven times what we farmed today everybody remembers the black and white pictures of Louisiana oyster boats loaded down with oyster shell the reason they're all in black and white is because it's been that long since we've had that many oysters even the mass Halls of the late 1990s feel like a distant dream to fishermen like Scott Maurer there used to be 50 60-foot oyster boats that would come in here every day and you don't see any of those anymore farming oysters today isn't fresh water salt water spills it impacts the oysters and it stresses them only about 10 000 of Scots oysters survived the 2021 hurricane season I've have had up to a million oysters on the farm we basically only have like two and a half to three lines right here that's all that we have left for the market size oysters Scott's oysters aren't wild for that they would need to reproduce naturally but the wild population just isn't large enough to make that happen so Scott and other farmers in Louisiana have to fertilize and then seed their oysters artificially most farmers in Louisiana don't raise oysters in floating cages like Scott does they actually do that on the sea floor they seed and install limestone substrate or use old oyster shells to start the reefs off but Scott can't get a lease to do that Louisiana issued a moratorium on new leases back in 2002 after it got into a legal battle with oyster Farmers over Coastal restoration work the state diverted fresh water Upstream but it ended up disturbing Reef growth because oysters are sensitive too much fresh water or even too much salt water from a storm surge can lead to Mass die-offs to top it off oyster reefs were already in bad shape since 1917 Louisiana has led an effort to replenish the sea it started dumping oyster shells Limestone and concrete onto beds so that new oysters could attach to them it's something the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Department still does today but it was too little too late experts say that today less than one percent of America's wild oyster reefs remain but 230 miles west of Scott's oyster Farm conservationists are celebrating some small but significant oyster-shaped success it looks like one two three four five six oysters are have grown on Seth Blitz has been working to restore Louisiana's coastline for nearly a decade this cluster of oysters and clams is a really good sign this is the rock so the rock in the cages is generally about that big and and it's got It's got a whole bunch of life on it look the Rocks he's talking about start out in big wire cages called gabions that get lowered into the water to give oysters something to attach to since 2017 Seth and his team have dropped nearly 2 000 along this Shoreline [Music] I'm standing actually kind of up on the oyster Reef itself this year in 2022 we're putting another Mile in so all told by the end of this summer we'll have two and a half linear miles of restructure here in Calcasieu lake kakushu lake is an estuary which is basically a transition zone between rivers and the ocean it's surrounded by coastal wetlands which work best as a line of defense against high tides and Storm surges when they're reinforced by structures like oyster reefs if you look at the Rock by itself it's about that tall if you look at the rock with the oysters it's almost twice as over twice as tall and so that's how the reef actually grows in height and that enhances its value to protect this Shoreline right here by abading some of the wave energy that comes across the lake building the reefs helps slow down erosion which is a huge deal in Louisiana since the 1930s an area of land the size of Delaware has disappeared part of the problem is that levees built to stop the Mississippi River from flooding also blocks sediment that would otherwise build up the shorelines every year instead the sediment washes straight out into the Gulf oysters won't save the coast by themselves but they are definitely part of a network of things that need to happen synth Seth's team installed the first mile of gabion's five years ago they noticed that erosion in that part of the shoreline slowed down those oysters will create a living mature Reef that will maintain itself over space and time building up a healthy oyster Reef that's off limits to harvesting provides huge benefits to fishermen these oysters that I'm holding right now are going to reproduce and a lot of those those larvae that spat will float through the lake and they'll settle on some of the reefs that do get harvested this approach has succeeded on the east coast in the Chesapeake Bay Fishers here harvested more wild oysters in 2021 than they had in 35 years that's because conservationists have spent decades seeding more than 5.4 billion oysters on 1200 Acres of newly restored reefs even then oyster populations in the bay are still at only one to two percent of their historic levels further north New York Harbor is seeing a promising rebound too 75 million adult oysters now grow on shells Stone and Porcelain planted by conservationists and volunteers with an initiative called the billion oyster project I would like to see Sanctuary reefs never dredged or never fished at all and if we had those located throughout the bay in various spots you'd always have brood stock or parent oysters to reseed the natural stocks for now Scott still has to rely on seeding the oysters that he'll eventually Harvest and sell to restaurants we have to have the oysters under mechanical Refrigeration within one hour of harvest from that point on as long as they stay you know refrigerated below 45 degrees then um that we're good we're good to go to the restaurant that solves most of his Harvest locally in New Orleans hey how's it going man doing good doing good we got a load for you today awesome he's handing over about a thousand oysters to JV Foods a local food distributor There You Go sir appreciate it all right we'll put the rest in the cooler in a second today they're delivering to an oyster bar in New Orleans called Sidecar [Music] these are point of Pines this is actually the oldest Farm in the Gulf I thought that would be a good way to celebrate National oyster day oyster sommelier Lindsay all day and her team have been serving up Scott's oysters since the restaurant opened in 2020. they're really good and salty they're always nice and clean the meat's beautiful Lindsay saves the shawls and sends them to a recycling program with a coalition to restore Coastal Louisiana you may have been running a program here for I think about a day a decade running oyster shells back into the Gulf during the busy season Lindsay and her team will sell around 10 000 oysters a week Source from Scott and other Farmers across the country and they serve them with everything from horseradish to hot sauce we also asked Scott for his tips on how to dress an oyster there's a lot of people that ask what my favorite topping on an oyster is and I don't necessarily have a favorite I just have a least favorite and that's cocktail sauce I don't feel that these oysters have to be covered up cocktail sauce so this is a little minionette that we make that I feel accentuates the Holy Spirit without covering it up [Music] here we go take that a little bit of this right here there's some vinegar sauce in there

Channel: Business Insider

Views: 1,055,105

Keywords: Business Insider, Business News, oyster, overharvesting, coastline, wild oyster, Louisiana, restoration

Id: 8Ac1TnYXLc8

Length: 10min 2sec (602 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 20 2022