[HN Gopher] The Return of New York Harbor's Oysters
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The Return of New York Harbor's Oysters
Author : dnetesn
Score : 90 points
Date : 2022-04-22 11:58 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (nautil.us)
(TXT) w3m dump (nautil.us)
| yelnatz wrote:
| I wanted pictures of the oysters but instead I got pictures of a
| guy staring at my soul.
| bombcar wrote:
| I wonder what they look like underwater after they've had time
| to settle.
| drewcoo wrote:
| I bet he has the same stare.
| lr wrote:
| https://www.billionoysterproject.org/reefs
| jonahbenton wrote:
| Here's Big
|
| https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/11/29/nyregion/00ny-oys...
| bogomipz wrote:
| This is a good recent article that has much more history of
| oysters in NYC, the causes of their demise as well as recent
| restoration efforts(including the Billion Oyster Project.)
|
| https://untappedcities.com/2021/02/03/history-new-york-city-...
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _Tell me why oysters are a keystone species.
|
| Oysters are just like the trees in a forest. You don't think of
| them that way, but it's the same with coral reef systems--without
| the coral, there's no coral reef. There's no biodiversity.
| Oysters used to be the landscape of New York Harbor, which
| stretched over hundreds of thousands of acres in a three-
| dimensional habitat. They provided food for all these different
| animals. There are over 100 species of fish that historically
| either lived in, found their mates in, or laid their eggs in New
| York Harbor oyster reefs.
|
| Fundamentally, all of our environmental problems are people
| problems, so if you ignore the people around the ecosystem and
| try to restore New York Harbor, it won't have a lasting impact._
|
| I like this guy's thinking.
| newsclues wrote:
| How do you solve people problems without eugenics?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| It's described in TFA, or at least the part relevant to the
| oysters:
|
| > Every time it rains, hundreds of millions of gallons of
| untreated household wastewater pours right out into the
| harbor. And that shouldn't be a thing.
|
| The problem is that New York has an ancient combined
| stormwater+sewage system that is designed for the rainstorms
| of long ago, so regular flooding events overwhelm sewage and
| require these overflows in the harbor lest the pipes back up
| into houses and the street. Modern cities get around this by
| both reducing the amount of nonporous surfaces (and thus
| diverting less water into the system), or by separating
| stormwater drainage so that an overflow isn't mixed with
| sewage.
| newsclues wrote:
| Yes, so some view it as economically cheaper for many
| humans to cease living, rather than to upgrade the
| infrastructure.
| pixl97 wrote:
| My answer to them is
|
| "You first"
| qiskit wrote:
| What a gentleman.
| newsclues wrote:
| The problem is that they get power and enforce their
| views on others.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| who is actually in power and actually enforcing
| involuntary population control in a democracy?
|
| it's definitely a very fringe opinion.
| [deleted]
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I thought the part before your second excerpt was insightful as
| well.
|
| > _We're trying to restore a billion oysters to New York Harbor
| and to engage a million people in that work by 2035. By setting
| these goals, we're basically saying that we must stop thinking
| of habitat restoration and improving public education as two
| separate issues. The best way to improve outcomes for both is
| to combine them and train students to restore the environment.
| [...]_
|
| Environmental impact is all about scaling: either because your
| process is self-multiplying or because part of your process is
| training >1 people who will carry on and contribute to the
| work.
|
| You can be the best, most productive oyster farmer in the
| world, but there's always going to be a cap to what you can do
| alone. Physical processes need physical muscle.
| rr808 wrote:
| I remember last time this came up a bunch of reefs were eaten by
| some kind of worm or parasite. I can't see now, does anyone know
| about this?
| LB232323 wrote:
| I'm not much for eating oysters, but these are the kind of
| leaders we really need. People with the will and means to inspire
| real, practical hope in our future.
|
| These are the "first movers" who really matter, those with the
| vision and confidence to make positive changes in their community
| and surroundings. People with the hope and confidence to give us
| hope and confidence in our future.
|
| So while I may not be much of an oyster eater, I commend Mr.
| Malinowski and his successful efforts to restore the waters of
| our precious land. From the harbors of New York City to every
| corner of this Earth, our land is worth saving. Our future is
| worth protecting and our people deserve hope.
| Amorymeltzer wrote:
| A nice little blog from the NYPL about New York Oysters:
| <https://www.nypl.org/blog/2011/06/01/history-half-shell-inte...>
| pm90 wrote:
| There's a nice Vox explainer for this:
| https://youtu.be/UcN6RXT7qpw.
|
| The part that's exciting for me is that these are variable (not
| static) barriers. I love solutions like these that intelligently
| use nature. eg in coastal areas in more tropical biomes, mangrove
| forests are a good flood control mechanism and their destruction
| has lead to excess flooding in a number of well documented cases
| (like Mumbai).
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Are there any domesticated sea plants or animals, akin to
| (genetically) domesticated plants or animals on land?
| jagger27 wrote:
| Farmed salmon comes to mind.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| ask sea world how that's worked out for them
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| Tangentially related:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_marine_mammal
| msrenee wrote:
| Not sea animals per se, but goldfish and Betta fish are
| definitely domesticated.
| philshem wrote:
| Related New Yorker article from 2021
|
| > How a landscape architect is enlisting nature to defend our
| coastal cities against climate change--and doing it on the cheap.
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/08/09/the-seas-are-r...
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Another nice idea is removing obsolete river dams to give fish
| access to their former breeding grounds upstream.
|
| >The removal of both dams, in conjunction with active stocking of
| alewives into lakes and ponds upriver and in other parts of the
| watershed, has helped the river herring population rebound
| dramatically. The number of alewives returning to spawn jumped
| from 78,000 in 1999 to 5.5 million last year.
|
| And the downstream estuary has reaped rewards, too.
|
| When those billions of juvenile river herring leave the
| freshwater lakes and rivers, they head for the sea and may spend
| between three and five years in the marine environment. There
| they serve are a food source for everything from cod and haddock
| to whales and seals.
|
| "They are really a kind of keystone ecological species for the
| Gulf of Maine," says Burrows.
|
| https://therevelator.org/edwards-dam-removal/
| ClosedPistachio wrote:
| Related:
|
| New York City Is Building a Wall of Oysters to Fend Off Floods
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29307258
|
| Cleaning New York's filthy harbor with one billion oysters
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18957542
| nattaylor wrote:
| On the shores of Rhode Island, my family has participated in an
| oyster gardening program run URI which involved the same wire
| boxes and shells with larvae attached. However we kept them tied
| to the dock, then they collected and distributed to the beds.
| It's cool to see the research seems to have evolved and they can
| just go straight to the beds now.
|
| That being said, all the little kids in my extended family got
| excited and educated about oysters from having them tied to the
| dock, so there's something to be said for that too.
| perihelions wrote:
| Molluscs' sensitivity to pollution is also the basis of some
| cities' water quality monitoring:
|
| https://hackaday.com/2021/02/18/internet-of-clams/
| 0des wrote:
| Its mainly certain _types_ of pollutants. They are filters
| after all so organic pollutants are fine while fuels and
| surfactants are a bigger problem.
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