The dinghy slowed to a stop at a long line of black bobbing baskets and David Lawlor reached out to inspect the first one. Inside lay 60 oysters, all with their shells closed, shielding the life within. They look great, beamed Lawlor. So did their neighbours in the next basket and the ones after that, all down the line of 300 baskets, totalling 18,000 oysters.
Their destinations were a series of breakwaters a few hundred yards offshore. The breakwaters are essentially man-made islands of jagged rocks, intended to stave off beach erosion that's been ongoing for decades. If it turns out they can host oyster reefs, too, all the better. Whales and dolphins have begun returning to New York Harbor; why not oysters, which, in these parts, once numbered in the billions?
New York City's sewer system is over a century old. In much of the city, stormwater and sewage still flow through the same pipes. When it rains, even just a 10th of an inch in an hour, the system overflows. These combined sewer overflows (CSOs) happen around 90 to 100 days a year, releasing an estimated 27 billion gallons of untreated waste directly into local waterways. That's the water oysters are expected to filter.