--- title: Restaurants Are Using Oysters To Boost Climate Resilience description: New York City restaurants are working with the Billion Oysters Project to restore the area's oyster population in the face of climate change. canonical: https://time.com/6338413/nyc-restaurants-billion-oyster-project/ author: Kyla Mandel article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-11-28T16:49:50.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-30T13:19:02.603Z article:section: Climate og:title: One Oyster at a Time, Restaurants Are Protecting NYC from Climate Change og:description: New York City restaurants are working with the Billion Oysters Project to restore the area's oyster population. og:url: https://time.com/6338413/nyc-restaurants-billion-oyster-project/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdbc953147ae9dc82/698a429fdb2987380d269950/billion-oyster-project-nyc-new-york-restaurants-climate-resilience.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: US-ENVIRONMENT-SCIENCE-OYSTERS og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: One Oyster at a Time, Restaurants Are Protecting NYC from Climate Change twitter:description: New York City restaurants are working with the Billion Oysters Project to restore the area's oyster population. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdbc953147ae9dc82/698a429fdb2987380d269950/billion-oyster-project-nyc-new-york-restaurants-climate-resilience.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- # One Oyster at a Time, Restaurants Are Protecting NYC from Climate Change > Sponsored content. 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Future Proof is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-futureproof-2026q3/newsletters?i=51e51bcd-0e45-40c5-858f-81cd4875c395&cr=time-nl-futureproof-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Restaurants Are Collecting Oyster Shells For Reef Restoration Projects [Watch (HLS stream): Restaurants Are Collecting Oyster Shells For Reef Restoration Projects](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/NGcKVRpL.m3u8) (5:18)  _Published 2023-11-27. Lobster Place, a seafood hall in Chelsea Market in New York City, is one of many restaurants around the city that collects and recycles its oyster shells to be cured and placed back into the harbor for reef habitat restoration._ Nov 28, 2023 4:49 PM UTC Lobster Place, a seafood hall in Chelsea Market in New York City, is one of many restaurants around the city that collects and recycles its oyster shells to be cured and placed back into the harbor for reef habitat restoration. by [Kyla Mandel](https://time.com/author/kyla-mandel/) and [Video by Lisa Nho](https://time.com/author/lisa-nho/) Nov 28, 2023 4:49 PM UTC Signs of New York City’s [oyster heyday](https://www.nypl.org/blog/2011/06/01/history-half-shell-intertwined-story-new-york-city-and-its-oysters) are hidden across Lower Manhattan. Pearl Street in the Financial District, takes its name from the valuable stone-like objects sometimes found inside oysters and whose shells built up and once paved the road; the mortar that binds Trinity Church opposite Wall Street is made from ground oyster shells. By the 19th century the city was known as the oyster capital of the world: oyster beds covered 350 square miles of the lower Hudson estuary and New York Harbor was estimated to hold half of the world’s known oyster population. Today that’s no longer the case. Pollution and overharvesting devastated New York’s oysters; only in the last 20 years or so have efforts been made to rejuvenate the area’s saltwater mollusks. That’s in part thanks to a partnership between the city’s restaurants and the nonprofit [Billion Oyster Project](https://www.billionoysterproject.org/). Together, with the backing of local government, they’ve worked to return used oyster shells to the waters surrounding New York City, which helps build a foundation from which new oysters can grow. Oysters play a vital role in maintaining clean water and protecting shorelines. They are natural filters, which helps improve water quality for other aquatic life. And the giant clusters they form provide a buffer against waves and help protect sensitive marshland from eroding—critical ecosystem services in the face of [climate](https://time.com/section/climate/)\-fueled storms and sea level rise. The oyster reefs also help boost the region’s biodiversity. Launched in 2014, the project aims to restore 1 billion oysters by 2035\. To achieve this, by next year it hopes to be able to restore 100 million juvenile oysters annually. So far, 18 oyster reef sites across the city’s five boroughs have been restored, and since launching its restaurant partnership program in 2015, more than 2 million pounds of shells have been collected from nearly 60 restaurants for their restoration efforts. **Read more:** [_Fighting Climate Change One Carrot at a Time_](https://time.com/collection/time-co2-futures/6328994/eleven-madison-park-climate-change/) One of the project’s earliest partners was seafood market The Lobster Place, which today is responsible for collecting restaurants’ buckets of used shells. The market itself also goes through some 20,000 oysters a week. It’s a “very symbiotic relationship for us,” says David Seigal, culinary director of The Lobster Place. “We have oyster shell waste, they need oyster shells to help build these reefs.” Once the discarded shells are collected, they go into an open-air pile where they “cure” for up to a year. Baking under the sun, any residue left on the shells decomposes or is eaten, and any parasites or disease-causing pathogens are killed off. Next, the clean shells are put into retrofitted shipping-container tanks filled with water from the harbor and oyster larvae, which swim around before eventually settling on the shells. After a few weeks, the populated shells are released into the restoration sites; the shells nestle onto the surface of the growing reef where the larvae soon become adult oysters. From being harvested to returning back to the water, “it’s a pretty wild ride for that shell,” says Mike McCann, a climate adaptation specialist at the Nature Conservancy, which previously helped the Billion Oyster Project select its restoration sites and develop methodology to measure success. While the project, along with a handful of other nonprofit initiatives and schools in the area such as the [Hudson River Foundation](https://www.hudsonriver.org/article/oyster-research-in-the-hudson-river-estuary) and the [Urban Assembly New York Harbor School](https://www.billionoysterproject.org/harbor-school), have been steadily building up New York’s oysters, McCann estimates it’s still only a fraction of what it once was: “To get that population back to a place where it can be self-sustaining is going to take a lot of effort and a lot of really good science.” **Read more:** [_What Happens When Diners Are Shown Climate Warning Labels on Meat Dishes_](https://time.com/6330520/climate-warning-labels-on-meat-study/) This year has also seen its challenges. While the project added 12 new restaurants to its shell-collection initiative in 2023, wholesale seafood sales, including oysters, have been down since the summer, says Boesch. She says this is in part due to oysters’ high price tag as well as the cost of labor for shuckers, which is rising as a result of labor shortages and the city’s increased minimum wage laws. “Due to changes in diner behavior in NYC, particularly in midtown Manhattan, we are looking to engage smaller partners and neighborhood restaurants,” says Boesch about plans for next year. Of course, it’s also important to remember what these oysters aren’t able to be: food. In addition to persistent pollution, city wastewater still flows into the harbor when there’s heavy rain. But perhaps the effort made by restaurants and the Billion Oyster Project may one day ensure the waters around Manhattan and along the East Coast become clean enough to help feed city diners again, hopes Seigal: “I see a future where eventually oysters are farmed for consumption closer to New York City.” **Correction, Nov. 28** The original version of this story misstated the number of restoration sites and number of pounds of shells collected by the Billion Oyster Project. There are 18 and 2 million, respectively, not 15 and 20 million. ## Transcript Right behind me. We have a raw bar people eat them. We save the shells and then they get repurposed to provide habitats for more ways to grow. So it's sort of like new upcycling and recycling. I see a future where nature and people can thrive in our cities oyster reefs eelgrass beds salt marshes Maritime Forest are making up more of our shorelines in our cities because these are places that can provide recreational opportunities points of access for people, but they can also make our cities more adaptable to climate change. Oysters are filter feeders. So they order to get their food. They are basically constantly opening their shell and drawing water in in hopes of getting algae by the plant and other particles that they can use for food. And in that process there helping to clear up the water and they remove a lot of the suspended particles, they remove excess nutrients and they can deposit that into the side of it and bury it or modify it in a way that it can be removed from the system through bacterial prophecies. If you put a oyster Reef 20 or 30 feet in the bottom of Oyster Bay New York Harbor the ability to really intercept those waves is pretty minimize. So it's really about finding the places in the harbor where you can place Reese in front of soft shorelines things like your Marsh edges and those are places where there's more opportunities for an incoming wave. This would have been dampened as it passes over that reef. And then as a result deposit more of the sediment that sand and silt and Clay another materials, which can then help that Marsh stay healthier. There's this like Grassroots effort that started in the early 2000s late 90s is called oyster gardening people in the community with throw bags of oysters over the sides appear. So they put a mesh bag of some oysters. But like they would just throw him over into whatever there in years Waterfront was and then they'd go there once a month maybe check on them, pounding your life having her dad moved in measuring. Right. Now the practice is like very much up enough in partnership with state agencies making sure it's being done the right way. We are in lovely Chelsea Market right now in Manhattan. This is The Lobster Place Seafood Hall. We were one of the first to join the building with your project shell collection program. We still around 20,000 wasters a week here. So we have a lot of shell and they have a lot of shell requirements started doing any shell to them. And now we also do their shell collection. So we have a truck that goes around the city and collect seashells from all the 80 participating restaurants. Lot of restaurants pay private waste removal services, you know, they threw out their garbage and you pay by the amount of bags that you throw out. So more shells equals more garbage across the money, but instead we got to repurpose these these shells and it does a good thing for the environment. Doing what's your project is kind of a very symbiotic relationship for us. We have oyster shell waste. They need a oyster shell to help build these reefs that they put together. So we we've got the the product and the oysters will attach themselves to the empty shells when they provided substrate basically for new oyster stew Groupon. Most of our Shoreline along Hudson River Park at this hard bulkhead. It's a sea wall and is also historic. So this particular area which is landfill as opposed to appear actually does not have that historic structure is so we were able to deviate from the standard treatments and build a sloped edges on both sides of the peninsula one side for habitat and the other side for Public Access. I think there's a lot of signs that we know that boisterous can grow and survive in New York Harbor and I think the question is about whether or not we can either do a restoration efforts to the right level or in the right places where we can actually establish self-sustaining reproducing populations that can survive on their own. Who really Envision the city where it's it's livable for people livable for nature and that makes it much more adaptable and resilient in the face of climate change. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6338413/nyc-restaurants-billion-oyster-project/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6338413/nyc-restaurants-billion-oyster-project/"},"headline":"One Oyster at a Time, Restaurants Are Protecting NYC from Climate Change","datePublished":"2023-11-28T16:49:50.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-30T13:19:02.603Z","description":"New York City restaurants are working with the Billion Oysters Project to restore the area's oyster population in the face of climate change.","url":"https://time.com/6338413/nyc-restaurants-billion-oyster-project/","keywords":["climate change","climate","sponsorshipblock","FuturesDeloitte","Futures","Futures Innovative"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Kyla Mandel","jobTitle":"Mandel is a senior editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/kyla-mandel/"},{"@type":"Person","name":"Video by Lisa Nho"}],"articleSection":"Climate","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/climate/","name":"Climate"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/6338413/nyc-restaurants-billion-oyster-project/","name":"One Oyster at a Time, Restaurants Are Protecting NYC from Climate Change"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Restaurants Are Collecting Oyster Shells For Reef Restoration Projects","description":"Lobster Place, a seafood hall in Chelsea Market in New York City, is one of many restaurants around the city that collects and recycles its oyster shells to be cured and placed back into the harbor for reef habitat restoration.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/NGcKVRpL/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2023-11-27T21:38:49.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/NGcKVRpL.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/6338413/nyc-restaurants-billion-oyster-project/","duration":"PT5M18S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/6338413/nyc-restaurants-billion-oyster-project/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```