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So…hey…what ever happened to that attempt to repopulate Jamaica Bay with lovable good-hearted, filter-feedin’ oysters? Ummm…well…it turns out that the colony failed. The poor oysters who made it to adulthood were unable to procreate (or, at least, their offspring were not able to attach to anything in Jamaica Bay). Fortunately, the oysters’ human friends are not licked yet and have a whole new weird project afoot…but before we get to that, let’s turn back the clock and look at the bigger picture of oysters in our area!
New York was once renowned for its oysters. By some estimates, up through the 1600s every other oyster in the world lived in New York’s harbors and bays! During the early 19th century, every other oyster harvested in the world was certainly taken from these waters. The oysters filtered the entire bay of algae, microbes, and pollutants. They also prevented the harbor from eroding away—it was like the entire waterway was coated with hard calcium carbonate (in fact it was exactly like that). Not only did the tough New York oysters prevent underwater erosion, they also stabilized the coastline and bore the brunt of storm surges. What tremendous mollusks! But alas, we were too hungry and too greedy and too careless…. By the end of the 1800s the population had crashed. Attempts to revive the poor oysters have consistently failed. (just follow that link up at the top).
However ecologists, oceanographers, and oyster fanciers have not quit trying. In fact with the aid of a variety of partners they are mounting the biggest attempt yet to restore Oysters to New York City’s bays and waterways. The New York Times details the agencies which have invested in the project:
The project is funded by a $1 million grant from the United States Interior Department’s Hurricane Sandy Coastal Resiliency Competitive Grant Program. The Environmental Protection Department, which is contributing $375,000, is working with the Billion Oyster Project, an ecosystem restoration and education project that is trying to restore one billion oysters to New York Harbor.
It is good to have money (I have heard), however, there is also a secret ingredient to this project. New York’s education department has been replacing all of the NY Public School’s bathroom fixtures with environmentally efficient toilets. The old porcelain toilets are being smashed to bits to form an artificial reef where the young oysters can get started. Five thousand public school toilets have been broken up and added to the project. These fixtures have served generations of New York’s humans in a necessary albeit lowly capacity. Let us hope they can get a couple of generations of oysters up and going in their second career (as smashed detritus on the bottom of Jamaica Bay)! We’ll report more as we know more so stay tuned.
To celebrate Halloween this week Ferrebeekeeper is exploring dreams and nightmares! Yesterday we introduced the Baku, a dream-eating, long-snouted spirit-beast from East Asia. Today we travel directly to the real of dreams and nightmares itself! Well sort of….Since I am unable to get inside the head of dreamers other than myself (at least with today’s technology) this means going to an almost equally scary place…the bedroom!
I wanted to combine the place where dreams happen with gothic decorative art (a particularly fitting style for Halloween). I therefore asked myself whether anyone had crafted overly-elaborate gothic beds. A quick Google Image search revealed the answer to be “Oh my goodness!” Apparently the world’s bedwrights have been hard at work creating an insane array of magnificent and horrifying beds to cradle the reposing bodies of well-heeled dreamers.
“Oh my…”
Here is a gallery filled with crazy and extravagant gothic beds (a fitting companion to past galleries of gothic clocks, lamps, gates, and houses). Behold the magnificent dark canopies, strange gargoyles, and haunting grotesques…along with every sort of flange, post, tower, buttress, arch, and bracket that imagination can conceive.
It’s difficult to believe that people sleep in such dark slendor…anyway, hopefully this range of bedframes will inspire your Halloween dreams (assuming that the baku does not get them first). Sleep well!
Jamaica Bay (Photo: Kathy Willens/Associated Press)
New York City is fortunate to have a thriving wetland inside the city. Visitors who have flown in or out of JFK have seen the huge intertidal salt marsh known as Jamaica Bay which lies along the boder of Brooklyn and Queens. Unfortunately the wetland has been eroding away into the Atlantic Ocean. This is partly because the east coast is a receding coastline and partly because of overdevelopment: there are numerous large sewage treatment facilities around the bay. The City’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has been trying to clean up the bay and prevent the loss of a uniquely beautiful wilderness. To do so they will need allies…little gray faceless allies.
Jamaica Bay is there at the bottom right
Jamaica Bay is still host to 120 species of bird and 48 species of fish, however one particular keystone life form has gone missing. During the last 5 decades the Eastern Oyster (Crassostrea virginica) has vanished entirely from Jamaica Bay. The mollusks used to be so plentiful as to be a hindrance to navigation, but they gradually fell victim to overfishing and the pollution caused by 8 million pushy, pushy New Yorkers.
All of this was true until two days ago (October 5, 2010) when the city laid down huge beds of oyster shells and reseeded Jamaica bay with endearing baby oysters. The DEP has spent hundreds of millions of dollars modernizing and improving the water treatment plants around the bay to shrink nitrogen levels and give the oysters a fighting chance.
Artist's Conception of Jamaica Bay at present
Hopefully the young oysters will thrive and again become a backbone of the recovering bay ecosystem. There are terrible perils out there facing the stalwart bivalves. Stressed oysters are susceptible to two horrid diseases known as “Dermo and “MSX“, both virulent pathogens with the names of German industrial bands. If the little mollusks can establish a foothold, filter feeding oysters are an immense boon to water quality. One large adult can clean up to 48 gallons of water in 24 hours. I’m rooting enthusiastically for the new neighbors.
"They never asked to be heroes."
ferrebeekeeper 