New Title: Oyster Reef Restoration Assistant

So... long time no write. I have been busy working at the New York City Parks and Recreation Department, the Natural Resources Group as the Oyster Reef Restoration Assistant and during my spare time I have been looking for jobs and having fun in the city. : ) It is a six month long position and the grant ends this year, but at least I get to stay in New York City for the summer and fall and who knows, maybe it will open up new opportunities because NewYork City is planning to restore 500 acres of oyster reefs by 2015 and 5,000 by 2050. There is a significant amount of research that needs to be done before oyster reef restoration goals can be met. Currently there is less than one acre of restored oyster reefs when all of the reefs are combined.

There are too many organizations to mention that are involved in oyster restoration in the New York Harbor so I will only focus on the main players. Oyster reef restoration is one of the components of the Comprehensive Restoration Plan, which was a collaboration led by the USACE (US Army Corp of Engineers) and the NY/NJ Harbor Estuary Program, established in the 1980s when the Hudson estuary was designated an estuary of national importance to coordinate restoration activities in the estuary. Oyster reef restoration was also mentioned as one of the components of PlaNYC 2030 and Vision 2020: NYC Comprehensive Waterfront Plan. The ORRP was formed in order to coordinate oyster restoration efforts among multiple organizations and to devise a plan to implement the large scale oyster reef restoration project I previously mentioned (5,000 acres by 2050). NY/NJ Baykeeper was charged with constructing five experimental small scale oyster reefs last fall and to organize the monitoring for this project to determine growth and survival of the oysters and the reefs effect on the estuary's biodiversity and water quality. One of the experimental oysters reefs was one of NRG's reefs that was constructed in 2006 but had subsided into the sediment due to low recruitment and high levels of sedimentation. Baykeeper added clam shell and 50,000 spat on shell that were raised with the help of high school students at the NY Harbor School located on Governor's Island. Part of my job is to serve as the liason between Baykeeper and NRG to help coordinate monitoring events and to assist with communication and data-sharing between organizations.

The other part of my job is to help close out the Shellfish Restoration Grant funded by the WCS-NOAA Jose. E. Serrano Lower Bronx River Partnership. NRG has been involved in oyster restoration work with this granting organization since 2006. I developed a monitoring protocol for the reef constructed in 2007, organized monitoring events, drafted progress and final reports, and analyze data. The two organizations that have been helping me with my monitoring are Rocking the Boat, an organization that teaches high school students environmental restoration and boat-building, and the Bronx River Alliance, which conducts environmental restoration along the Bronx River.