Can a Billion Oysters Save New York City?
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- čas přidán 22. 05. 2024
- Heroes on the half shell… Oyster power?
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When people picture New York City they see skyscrapers, subways, and a concrete jungle. But the Big Apple is really a seaside city built on an archipelago. In the wake of a century of industrial pollution and climate change-fueled superstorms like Hurricane Sandy, New York’s waterways need help. Learn how Billion Oyster Project is working to restore one of the world’s greatest lost ecosystems in order to clean up New York’s water and protect it from an uncertain climate future.
Learn more about Billion Oyster Project: www.billionoysterproject.org/
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I tell you from fishing Long Island my entire life...within the last 5 to 7 years the water has been cleaner, sometimes crystal clear in the bay, visibility to 20' at times. The wildlife, whales, dolphins, striped bass, bluefish, bunker, sharks and so shellfish has been increasing every year. Between guidelines and restrictions the quality of the water and marine life has definitely improved. Surely not like the 16 and 1700’s but so much better than the 80's and 90's. Was a dead zone for a while. Now Life is everywhere
Thats dope to hear as a native new yorker.
Same here in Brooklyn, NYC. The water quality has improved drastically in the last 8 years or so, bringing with it a bonanza of big healthy fish. We’re benefiting from projects like this.
Truth. I'd even go further, 10-15 years ago with noticeable water quality improvement.
Amazing!
Along with that good news, the fact that one oyster can filter that much water per day, is a further addition to this reality! Well done! With ❤ from 🇦🇺.
New York area fisherman here. There are and always have been oysters all over the area. They need to close some areas they plan to seed with oysters to commercial fishing dredges. Those things are like underwater plows that change the sea floor.
Really surprised that the video didn’t mention another key roll oysters play in repairing the ecosystem. As the oysters grow, they absorb carbon from the water and sequester it as calcium carbonate. For every molecule of calcium carbonate, there are three atoms of carbon locked away for eons. This helps to reverse the acidification of the water, making it more habitable for other marine life.
As they say...the world is your oyster! ❤
No matter how many Oysters, etc we put in the ocean it won't reverse the effects of society. We put out way to much CO2 daily for fish or oysters, plants, etc all over the world to keep up. We are burning what took natures hundreds of thousands of years to store away. We are doomed.
um actually🤓🤓, there is only an atom of carbon in a calcium carbonate molecule, since the formula of calcium carbonate is CaCO3
Oysters are the super heroes of the aquatic world!! I wish if we can be more educated and value the natural eco- systems that we have until its too late. Everything in nature has a purpose and sometimes we understand it sometimes we don't.
Oysters are now so expensive, only the rich can afford them.
Back in 18th century London, they were so cheap them became a staple for the poorest!
"Everything in nature has a purpose" is a reach and simply not true, it's reaching so much it's sounding religious
@@saltburner2 that happens more often than you would think. it was the same for snails and frog legs
Oysters should not be eaten and are full of toxic chemicals and metals, by the way.
Most time, we don't
Amazing, living in New York all my life i had no idea how important Oysters were to our water.
Spread the word, thats actually super common, like just a bit ago i was talking to a New Yorker and he didn't know either. Which is super funny to me because I live in nebraska. Like he's out here helping with a humanitarian project and out of nowhere someone from such a land locked state drops that (he was super interested)
To explain, i used to live in VA and spent my youth volunteering for ecological education and restoration lol
I was watching a different video sometime last year, which compared the 19th century practice of oyster street vendors to today's ubiquitous hot dog cart. It was that common.
@@ConstantChaos1 we also need to spread the word to start landscaping with native plant species. Research conducted by Dr. Tallamy found that as biomass of non-native plants within residential areas exceed 30%, that the Carolina Chickadee population tanks. This is because even though people were feeding the adults with bird feeders, their yards didn't supply enough food for chickadees' babies, which are fed caterpillars. Most insects coevolved with the native plants in an area, so when those native plants are replaced with non-native species the nursery industry sells, then the caterpillars/butterflies/moths die out, which in turn starve the native bird populations.
Really liked the video.
Hated the clima change remarks, as if the earth has never changed the climate, humans have lived trough colder times and hotter times it’s silly to think of nature as a constant and rather for what it is a changing force.
However, the content its amazing, and it’s amazing what humans can do when they use the time to come up with solutions rather than complaining.
@camilistico the degree of change is not what it's supposed to be its way too high we shouldn't be warming at this rate
Hey smart people! Staten Island resident here. So amazing to see BOP getting some love and some shine, and thank you Joe for spreading awareness about this stellar group of humans. They are the best of what NYC has to offer--smart, local, hardworking folks who take great pride in their mission of keeping and protecting this amazing city. I live in one of the hardest-hit Superstorm Sandy communities on the coast of SI and even to this day there is profound construction and repair going on. Our waters are the best they've ever been in my lifetime, and probably a hundred years, too. Billion Oyster Project is a vanguard of that kind of transformation and they deserve the love and support of all New Yorkers. Oysters are a huge part of Staten Island history; one of our neighborhoods is named after a popular version and we brew an Oyster Stout at our local brewery, too. Sustainable, environmentally friendly, nutritious, and d-mn delicious!
That's ok cause you're all vax.ed and boosted every week. Dr. Shiva Ayadurai explains infrastructure in his videos.
And don't forget the microplastics from fast fashion, polyester clothes that seep into your water when you do laundry.
In general, people don't seem to understand that everything that is done to the landscape: shaping the land, changing the habitats, polluting or diluting the waters has an effect on the future, as we see today. Planting the oysters is a start, but there's much more to be done. Thanks for this enlightening video.
people cant seem to grasp the concept of actions having consequences
Before mechanised oyster removal, there wew likely ore than a billion oysters in the waters around New York City. I strongly support the BOP and I hope it will be successful.
If the part where he says that New York was once home to more than half of the entire world's oysters is true, then obviously there were probably several billion.
In the 1800's under SAIL POWER they were harvesting oysters from NY
and shipping them in barrels to Europe.
They were also harvesting the little baby oysters and sending them
down to virgina to repopulate those waters with oysters to harvest again.
It amazes me that we are still polluting our waterways even in the last decade. Its something Americans usually consider a third world problem.
Well some people do consider the US a third-world-country wearing a gucci-belt.
rules for thee but not for the rich
Capitalism baby: privatize the profits and dump the waste on the public - someone else's problem.
Really? You know, considering so many of Europe's major waterways are disgusting.
I moved out of the city. Now I have a water feature that's used by deer, rabbits, foxes, squirrels, racoons, many birds and butterflies. It's wonderful and amazing...like Starbucks for animal life.
Cities are bad for the environment. Rain absorbs the heat of building, sidewalks and such and that hot water depletes the oxygen and kills aquatic life. People should spread out. Have fields, trees, lakes and wetlands in-between small towns and cities.
I have followed The Billion Oyster project for a while. So fascinating.
99% Invisible did an episode about them several years ago and I've been obsessed ever since.
As a NYer, this was really eye opening.
the forest analogy is great and helps people sympathize with the cause a lot more easily I think. sadly, people are disconnected from marine life and marine ecosystems because of the literal barrier/divide between us and it. this project gives me hope
I mean, the main thing that will convince people to join this project is the fact that all that oyster breakwater will save many lives and millions (possibly billions) of dollars worth of property. The more I think of it, the more I realize that there is a pretty strong anthropocentric case in favor of most environmentalist causes. In other words, there is essentially no reason not to do this.
This gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling that when sea levels rise and New York floods, at least it'll be clean water!
Bring back more oysters, and New York will never flood.
One of the coolest things about growing up in NYC to two ecologically minded parents was the front row seat I got to see the rehabilitation of the biome. I remember when I was a little kid, 3 or 4, not being allowed to go in the water at the beach on Staten Island. We'd ride bikes or roller skate up and down the boardwalk and pick up sea glass and sea shells, but if we got in the water we needed to scrub. I grew up going to camps run by the parks department in SI's Greenbelt doing citizen science cataloging the invertebrate life in the streams and lakes, pulling down invasive vines, and learning to ID all the plants and trees around me. I can remember finding leaches for the first time in a sample bucket and learning how they are an indicator species. Between the time I was born and when I graduated high school in 2003, we went from "If you got in the water you need to wash ASAP" to people swimming there on purpose. I'm so proud of my city.
As someone who lives in NYC- they’ve been talking about this for years. Ppl on the streets with pamphlets etc. I even saw an art gallery dedicated to the idea once. At any rate, I doubt it will happen
I'm so happy to see projects like this. There's similar work going on closer to me in the Chesapeake Bay, though I don't think it's on quite the same scale. Great to see little sparks of hope for the future that can get lost in the gloom.
Was about to say the same thing.
I used to love volunteering to help out there, unfortunately I had to move, if not I could 100% see myself having grown up into a marine biologist
Good News! Go Eat Oysters! The more you eat the easier they are to save! I know the owner of an oyster restaurant, and he's always talking about how they save the shells and give em back to the sustainable oyster farmers!
@medleyshift1325 well oysters that are imported at least, I would not recommend eating native NY harbor oysters they are not safe for human consumption (I'm hazmat certified they are legit unsafe to eat this isn't just ppl being like the harbor is dirty) but as they mentioned it is super helpful to eat oysters in NYC
Tho also they can boil the shells when faster turnaround is needed, it's not inconceivable that you could eat an oyster and by the time you go to the beach next it has oysters growing on it, esp if there is an enclosure building drive and since its winter we probably got a while before ppl are even thinking abt the beach
Fortunately for @matthewconstatine5015 Chesapeake Bay Oysters are delicious! @@ConstantChaos1
This is a fantastic organization and I'm so excited to see them get some well deserved love, especially from one of my favorite CZcamsrs!
the city really should have a seafood museum, which shows the entire eco system of the bay, how oysters are rehabing the bay, and have a public floating park like what was just created in nyc.
Thanks for the show! I heard about the oyster project when it started so I am glad to see there is so much progress.
Interesting! I live in Geneva, Switzerland and we have the opposite problem... two invasive bivalve species, quagga and zebra mussels are taking over with severe ecosystem impacts and significant complications for the city services since we use lake water to cool or warm part of our city. And those little suckers clog everything up and are too deep for local fauna to be able to predate them.
Get king Crab.. And then when that invasive species thrive too much eat them
Just eat the mussels. Yum yum yum
Send them to New York!
Classic problem of invasive vs. native fauna.
I'm sure the NY oysters could mess things up in many other places of the world.
Hope your mussel problem improves! (And that people don't try to fix it by adding more invasive species, lol)
@@ericeaton2386 I hope so too!
9:11 if that giant mountain of oyster shells were thrown back into the harbor (not all at the same time, but at the same rate they were gathered). maybe new oysters would've grown faster
Your videos are always so passionate!!! Love watching yout content bro! Keep up the incredible work!
i saw a longer documentary on this project on PBS Nature just earlier - couldn't believe how alive and thriving the project felt. and the whole thing is based on something that could actually work out to some great benefits to the world!! 😃 a veritable ecosystem of its own, with youth and the elderly alike, from all kinds of backgrounds, working together. beautiful!
now, i already watch every episode of yours Joe so, will spare the nice comments on that aspect of the video, but... it's not that you don't deserve them!!! 😼 (you're already one of my top channels to watch. 😂)
bonus fun fact, Lobsters also used to be tossed around like (literal) dog food. :)
Wow, amazing. Didn't know this project nor oyster facts. Great and important work
Truly remarkable history and forward looking science!
Really interesting. Thanks for the education!
I love this channel and this story!!
Wow! What an excellent video! This is the human interaction with the rest of the world I've been looking for. Well done. I was raised in Pt. Reyes, California. We dug up clams, fished, caught crabs & ate oysters. Oysters from Tomales Bay & Drake's Estero are some of the best oysters on the planet. Thank you for this story.
Agata is a pleasure to listen to. You know she knows her stuff well and delivers it in a digestible way. She's the researcher animals wish research them. PBS, hire her up faaaast!
very eye opening! Thx for this.
love this channel and these videos!
I love the pascal’s triangle run time. ❤
We also need to have these oysters at the mouth of every river entering the Chesapeake
Humans finally taking responsibility for managing ecosystems as the apex organism, you love to see it
It's fascinating how important this seemingly insignificant mollusk is. I see the restoration of oyster beds the way I see the importance of the beaver. Both are keystone species that have a substantial effect on the environment and other species.
Hey Joe, Bob here. Fascinating video about New York’s oysters. Too bad this project wasn’t started years ago. Thanks for the video.
That was fascinating and hope-inspiring!
Every time I read about these superfood, superanimals, super ecosystems, it gives me hope for the future. And so do you Joe (and in this case, the people working at 1 billiion oysters), by sharing this information.
Now, I one day hope to have some land I can have a natural pool, now I wonder if I can put some oysters in there to clean the water. Instead of electricity run filters or worse, a chemical pool
I almost hate when someone says things like "When people think of New York City, they don't think of islands," because I'm, like, "They don't?!" It makes me wonder if I'm more neurodivergent than I realize . . . (Do people also not wonder that, too?)
I feel in general people just don't care about things that don't affect them. Everytime I tell somebody I'm from NY they assume NYC. I live like 300 miles away and have never even been there.
People like us who spend our free time watching science videos probably know more than the average person.
Really cool video as usual. Though it is important to note that dioxins don't get cleaned up by oysters. They bioaccumulate in the food chain. The toxicity does not go away unfortunately.
I took my son to NYC a couple months ago. I haven’t been there in over a decade. I was very impressed at how clean it is now and the new construction. I have no doubt NYC will succeed at this endeavor as well.
Great video!
There's a superhero team I wanna see. Or at least have lunch with.
Thats very sad that the ecosystem was destroyed to begin with. I do hope missions like this become more widely supported
Having that wave break is a smart idea. Up here in Alaska, we're having that issue. Normally we would have ice that would absorb all that energy from the storms. Now we're in the beginning of December with no ice, and the storms are reaping havoc on the coastal villages.
REAPING havoc? HA!!! You DOPE!!!!
Thank you 🙏
Thanks 😊
how interesting and educational. thank you
Billion oyster project should team up with the New York City tourism folks --
New York City
The World's Oyster
Delightful, and super interesting!
I had a bunch of these oysters in my Science classroom last year!!
Thanks
Well done
I love this!
oysters are a bandaid - to really combat the problem you have to go to the source and not just try to cure the symptoms - if you cure the source of the issues the oysters will come back on their own without much intervention
You can look up Öresund (the strait between Denmark and Sweden) and the amazing change that happend to it after the bridge was built. The pillars are covered with clams and have helped clean the water
We actually do think about all the water aroundus. If your going back and forth from BK or The BX you definitely think about. Underwater tunnels with trains running through them or the bridges that carry millions of cars and trains, you ain't ignoring all that.
This is so amazing! I wonder what we could do for fresh water?
flawless video
The name of the three eyed fish in the simpsons is blinky just so you know.
Great video, would love a follow up in a few years. FYI because we now can see a live Tornado in Kansas and Hurricanes in Florida real time, it give the illusion that there are more and stronger storms. When I was a kid we found out and got phots not video days later.
Cool to hear gone with the Wynn’s in the background!
this is a great video
Kind of sad the destructiveness of humans, this much damage in a couple hundred years.
On a lighter note spat is a funny name for baby oysters.
Sorry, I’m allergic to shellfish so the city is toast.
Wait it’s NOT all about ME?
Ok, bring on the filter feeders…
Can they do it? YES THEY CAN!!! One day people will even be eating pristine New York Harbor oysters again. ❤❤❤
Just to make them disappear again
Wow everyone should see this video.
@JoeHanson @BeSmart Generally, in a mechanical sense, when a filter has been used, the old filter is replaced and is either cleaned or disposed of. When the oysters are "done" filtering, what becomes of that which they filtered?
Great question! So the oysters are able to sort of “taste” as they filter feed, and the nasty solid stuff they don’t want to eat gets sequestered away and excreted inside a sticky substance. This “coagulated” microtrash sinks to the bottom and is broken down slowly by scavengers and microbes. Invisible toxins are unfortunately sequestered into their tissue and shells, but are at least sequestered out of the water (hence why no one will be eating NY harbor oysters anytime soon)
@@besmart Thank you.
Love this. If the nature around us dies, that never benefits us in the long run
...I was envisioning a billion oysters joining together like a gigantic bivalve mollusk version of Voltron to defend NYC against an alien invasion and/or giant kaiju monsters...
Well, we're working on that, too. I mean, there's just so much that even NYers can do at one time.
Honestly, that's not too different from what they actually are doing, when you think about it.
BOP sounds great! how lucky we are that RFK Jr and the Riverkeepers lead the fight to cleanup the Hudson 🙏💪👊
This is one of those things that I have not thought of before. After hearing more about it, it gives me an understanding that nature can literally save us humans from ourselves. Or, by creating deeper bonds with nature, humans can help restore the damage humans have done to the environment and the earth.
It gives me hope for the future and inspires me to want to figure out how I can collaborate with nature to help save the planet. Currently, I am composting with community groups, with hopes of expanding to other neighbourhoods/cities/municipalities/regions/etc.
Hopefully, we can figure out a better composting system as well as a system to grow fruits and vegetables locally in order to lower costs and eliminate waste.
Yes, that’s the phrase I was looking for, thank you! “literally save us from ourselves”. I’d been thinking to myself ‘we either learn to live in harmony with the planet, or be wiped out by it’ until I realized it’s pretty much the same thing. Doh!😉✌️
My first response to the title:
Like NY'ers need any more assistance in the libido department....
😆🤣🤣 Love you guys!!
I started working on a tugboat in New York Harbor in 1972. At that time the horbor was badly polluted . Then came the clean water and air acts. By the time 2009 came around and I retired, there were people fishing off the Statue of Liberty and I saw cormorants diving for fish in Newtown Creek , one of the worst polluted places in NY . Gowanus canal was another sewer, dead dogs, rats , etc. I think it was the late 1970's there was a big oil spill in Gowanus . It's amazing how nature can recover
The clean up of the Hudson River began in the 1970s. The oysters are just the latest stage in the process.
meanwhile, in oyster illuminati headquarters...
"yessss all according to plan!"
Often the most unimportant looking things are the most important for us and the ecosystem.
Oysters are also a great source of calcium carbonate... Which is very useful in organic chemistry. Just saying.
One of many locations in the world that can use some awareness and help.
TL;DR: Oysters are like a living sea wall that can heal and prevents erosion.
Born and raised in brooklyn, so I can confirm the cleaner water. The gowanus canal no longer stinks. The new marshes at the shirley chisolm park and around Mill Basin are teeming with wildlife like songbirds and crabs; the environment reminded me so much of when i went kayaking in south carolina. The rockaway beaches were so clear up to my knees people can't believe it was nyc when I showed them photos of clear to teal colored water reminscent of the caribbean. I routinely see dolphins when I go to the beach too, and whale watching companies have popped up...because the whales are back! Plus all the waterfront parks created post-Sandy [in brooklyn and manhattan] are gorgeous. Headed in the right direction on this one, NY ❣️
Great video! One nit pick: at the end you attribute the song New York New York to Frank Sinatra. He was covering Liza Minnelli!
Nature repairing nature. I love it.
We just gotta help it and not harm it.
I also want to highlight the living breakwater project who is artificially restoring these breakwaters with green concrete with built in tidal pools and the like
The year was 2024 when the Great Oyster War began. What begin as a simple strategy to save New York, quickly turned into the end of New York as we know it. The oyster population exploded and random radiation induced mutations caused them to develop human arms and velociraptor legs. By 2025, New York had all but succumbed to now fully sentient raptor, body building oysters.
Watching Joe is as joyful as always ❤
So cool
A lot of street names and areas in NY are still Dutch!
Like Wallstreet (a wal is another word for muur in Dutch) like the walls of a castle or fort
Harlem (Haarlem is a city)
Broad way (Brede weg a direct translation)
Brooklyn (Breukelen is a city as well) and so on.
Pretty cool!
ngl, when I saw the thumbnail, I thought it's Big Willy Defao Famous Actor for a second there.😂
As if they cried out in terror and suddenly perished...
Wait...a billion with a B?!
Very cool! Now I feel stupid for enjoying oyster buffets 🤦♂️😭
Projects like this make me wonder what future archaeologists will think when they find remnants of it a few hundred years from now.
I swam in the Hudson a couple years ago, it was pretty neat and a bit scary to be honest. I didn’t get sick, so that says something.
Is there good modeling on oysters as breakwaters? Like if there was a vibrant oyster bed how much weaker would Sandy's storm surge have been? It's hard to tell if the impact would be immaterial or critical. Links appreciated!
What happens to all the stuff the oysters filters? Do they retain those toxins? Do people who consume oysters then take in those pollutants? Thanks.
At exactly the 10:00 mark, he says "Oysters from the New York Harbour won't be safe to eat for decades". So one can assume that yes, they retain the toxins, but no, people won't eat them until the waters are clean enough that the amount of toxins in them are below safe levels, whatever that might be.
Oysters should only be eaten when there is an R in the month (i.e., not May to August).
Some toxins are broken down, others are not.
If it doesn't kill the oysters outright, yes, at least to some extent. They are remarkably good at extracting whatever is in the water. That's basically the idea of using them for bioremediation. In other words - there's no way anyone should be eating any of those oysters at any time for the foreseeable future. It's entirely possible that the city will flood from sea level rise before those oysters are safe to consume again.
They mentioned that the oysters in the bay won't be suitable for human consumption for a few decades (10:01) which would be hinting at how many generations that will be sequestering toxins that will take either additional organisms (namely bacteria and fungi) to deal with or just to be buried and inaccessible to the ecosystem at large. Probably there is a resource with the Billion Oyster Project with more information on that quick, but very important, sentence.
Another reason why animals are friends not food.
A Billion Oysters, as a Think Tank, yeah i bet that they'd be smart enough to Save NYC.
Using native organisms like this to protect the city is also going to be far cheaper than any seawall as well.
Um, how do oysters protect from rising sea levels? Oysters protect the city by making the water cleaner, not by stopping climate change.
@@MatthewTheWanderer AN excellent question. Let me explain: They create reefs of oyster shells grown on top of each other. These function as natural breakwaters against storm surge and wind driven waves, which is what a lot of the flooding risk is from the early sea rise from climate change will cause. They also grow in cold water, slightly polluted water, and grow much faster than coral reefs, so they are perfect for the estuary area that is there. The reefs they form will also catch sand and form sand bars to absorb storm surge and wind driven waves.
When areas have swamps, sand bars, and reefs, they have less flooding from storms and high winds, even if the tides are very high and the sea level has risen. I have a friend that lives in Jacksonville, FL and it took a direct hit from a CAT 4 hurricane. There was wind damage and minor flooding. The only major flooding was in the downtown area that was right next to the river and heavily paved. That area still has all of its sand bars and swamps because it didn't start to grow until the 90's, after we knew better and so they didn't fill in the swamps and pave everything. There are flood water ponds everywhere, green areas, stands of trees in low lying areas, natural riverbank on parts of the rivers, swampland all over the place, and sand bars that are parks along the ocean and in the estuary for the river that runs through the city. A CAT 2 hits Miami and everything floods because they have no where for the water to go and nothing to absorb the waves from the storm surge.
@@KnightsWithoutATable Literally none of that will stop rising sea levels!
@@MatthewTheWanderer Larger storms and their waves show up first. Coastal cities need to deal with that now while we get off of fossil fuels. I suggest you do some reading or a dive here on CZcams about storm surge, wind driven waves, and what rising sea levels actually mean for coastal cities. Sea level is not static and much more complicated when it comes to Climate Change.
@@KnightsWithoutATable You obviously don't understand any of that stuff, lol.
Nice.