Every Monday, the Nature Conservancy visits Hemenway’s Restaurant in Providence to collect oyster shells left over from the plates of hungry diners.
Conservancy staffers empty a nondescript, 64-gallon bin typically brimming with more than 1,000 oyster shells. They hope the weekly haul from Hemenway’s and other local restaurants will support an oyster-restoration project hailed by environmentalists and the commercial oyster industry alike.
If all goes according to plan, the shells will become part of an artificial reef in a yet-to-be-determined body of salt water in Rhode Island.
The conservancy aims to build the reef in June, or in June 2012, depending on how quickly it can choose a site. Researchers then hope that the reef provides the perfect bed for naturally occurring oysters to settle and spawn.
“It’s kind of a proof of concept, will this work?” said Jules Opton-Himmel, a coastal and estuary specialist at the Nature Conservancy’s Rhode Island chapter.
Opton-Himmel said the model has proven viable elsewhere, mostly in southern areas of the United States. If it works here, it could be scaled up and serve to jump-start a wild oyster population that largely disappeared more than a century ago.
“It will be an ongoing effort, but reef by reef is how we hope to bring back the oyster population in Rhode Island,” said Boze Hancock, a Rhode Island-based member of the conservancy’s global marine team. Hancock recently co-authored a report that called wild oysters in Narragansett Bay “functionally extinct.”
It was not always that way.
Hancock said marine navigation charts from 1868 show oyster reefs dotting as much as half the Providence River, while other evidence points to significant stocks of oysters in coastal ponds and parts of Narragansett Bay.
By the turn of the 20th century, overfishing, pollution and disease had all but wiped out the state’s naturally occurring oyster stock.
Construction firms gathered what remained and crushed the shells to produce lime for concrete. “Which is about as effective a way we could come up with to make sure we completely extinguished oysters,” Hancock said.
The condition of oysters was rated as “poor” overall, leading the researchers to advise steps that include reef conservation, fisheries management and controlling the spread of nonnative shellfish.
The acres of oysters some Rhode Islanders recall filling Narragansett Bay during the 1900s were imported from Long Island Sound and tended to by oyster farmers. But the farmers did little to create reefs with hard surfaces where oysters prefer to spawn.
Some scientists say oysters especially favor surfaces composed of dead oyster shells. That is the concept the Nature Conservancy wants to test in Rhode Island.
Armed with a $46,000 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the conservancy plans to build two reefs, each a different height. Each will contain a layer of oyster shells over a base of clamshells. A third neighboring area will remain untouched. The conservancy will then monitor the untouched site and two reefs to see where oysters reproduce.
First, however, the conservancy requires oyster shells and clamshells – lots of them. All told, plans call for the Conversancy to collect about 118 cubic yards of shells. That works out to about 750,000 clamshells and 250,000 oyster shells, Opton-Himmel said.
So the Conservancy started a program it coined Oysters Gone Wild and turned to Blount Fine Foods in Fall River, which provided clamshells. To get the oyster shells, the Conservancy turned to five Rhode Island restaurants and plans to add at least three more in the coming weeks.
Restaurants participating in the program call it a win-win all around.
Restaurateurs said that the program also eliminates the expense of paying a waste hauler to take the shells to a landfill. And restaurants can tout their environmentally friendly stripes, thanks to promotional materials explaining the Oysters Gone Wild program placed in the eateries.
Steven Long, the executive chef at Hemenway’s Restaurant, said he also considers the program a smart business move. The restaurant, which purchases seafood from local suppliers and local oyster farmers, has an interest in promoting clean water, which oysters produce by their natural filtering. Cleaner water, Long said, improves the quality of seafood and attracts tourists that dine at his restaurant.
“There’s nothing but good that comes from this whole system,” Long said.
Commercial oyster farmers also applauded the program.
Bob Rheault, executive director of the East Coast Shellfish Growers Association, said that the industry largely supports efforts to restore the wild-oyster stock.
But it’s doubtful that wild oysters will find their way to dinner plates. Rheault and restaurant managers said consumers prefer farmed oysters that appear more uniform in appearance and consistent in quality.
Nonetheless, the Nature Conservancy project could prove tempting for a commercial oyster seller looking for a ready-made stock, Rheault said. With oysters fetching about 50 cents apiece, such a harvest could deliver “a significant chunk of cash” for a farmer, he said.
“When they open these restored areas, if thieves haven’t been in there already, it can be quite lucrative,” Rheault said.
Opton-Himmel said the Conservancy would decide whether to allow harvesting based on the final location selected and how well the oysters spawn.
“It’s kind of a fine line in being that this is an experimental process,” he said. •
