Oyster Shucking Competition

Believe it or not, oyster shucking, or the opening of oysters, is a competition sport. Oyster shuckers want to be the fastest without damaging the oyster flesh, which can result in significant price reductions for the oyster because it is then only fit for selling for cooking purposes, such as stew, while undamaged pricier oysters are eaten raw. The fastest oyster shucker is Patrick McMurray, who set the world record of 38 oysters in under a minute in 2010. 

New York City has a long history of oyster shucking and it is still celebrated at an annual event called the "Oyster Frenzy" at the Grand Central Oyster Bar. They even made an ice sculpture!

There was events going on throughout the day. We arrived just in time for the first round of oyster shucking contestants to compete.

There was other entertainment as well. This is the Naked Cowboy that performed. Naked Cowboys are a variety of oysters grown in Long Island Sound. On my birthday I tried six different oysters and the Naked Cowboy was my favorite, in part because of the awesome name. : )

This is a photo from inside of the Grand Central Oyster Bar. It was packed. The restaurant was built in 1917 when Grand Central Station opened its doors.

Besides oyster shucking, there was also a beer shucking competition. This involved opening a case of bottled beer the fastest with a bottle opener. I was one of the last three contestants to sign up and opened a case of Pumpkin Ale, my favorite. Afterwards the shucked oysters and beer was given out the the contestants and the onlookers. Don't worry, nothing was wasted. :)

Here are the two final contestants for the oyster competition. That fistful of cash is the winnings: $3,000.

Oyster Spat Found!

Two weeks ago I went to the oyster reef with Danica to check the spat collectors and to our surprise we found oyster spat! In the photo below the oyster spat is the brown flat shell on the right with the white stripe down the center. To the left is a slipper shell, Crepidula plana, which is commonly confused with oyster spat. This species of slipper shell, or limpet, lives inside oysters and other bivalves, which is why it is so flat. 

Here is a close-up of the oyster spat. The small round encrusting organisms are barnacles.

Interestingly we only found oyster spat attached to the shell that had been sitting in the water for two months. There were no oyster spat found on the shell that had been out for a month or two weeks. Some research has shown that oyster spat are more attracted to substrates that have accumulated a layer of biofilm, or bacteria. This layer of biofilm takes approximately a month to produce. Although this is a possible explanation, I've talked to an oyster aquaculturalist and he said that oystermen put out shell only two weeks before it is expected for the oysters to spawn. Maybe there is another explanation...

Stay tuned for more baby pictures!

LaGuardia Spat Collectors

My most recent posts are full of links and are lacking photos. This post will change that. Yesterday I went to LaGuardia Airport to collect and replace spat collectors, a monthly activity that I have been involved in since June. The spat collectors consist of bags of oyster shell that are tied to a rope and weighed down with a rock to serve as an anchor. There are two bags per rope and there are two ropes. Sadly we haven't found any spat, but we have found a variety of organisms living inside the bags and attached to the rope, which further supports the fact that oyster reefs do not only provide habitat for oysters but other organisms as well. 

This is one of the ropes that the spat collectors were attached to. As you can see, it is completely encrusted with organisms, primarily hydroids. Hydroids are Cnidarians, so they are related to sea anenomes and can sting. It was so covered, the rope was difficult to pull up because it was slippery. We wore gloves to get a better grip and to avoid the hydroid's stinging cells.

Here is Eddie, an employee of the USDA who takes care of wildlife issues at the LaGuardia Airport. He is also a rock climber and has an extensive knowledge of knots, which came in handy in tying the oyster bags to the rope.

This is one of the spat collectors. It is completely covered with tunicates, which are also called sea squirts (because they can squirt water up to two feet) and sea grapes (because they appear, but do not taste like, grapes). They are highly tolerant of polluted water, which is probably why they are so numerous...

While I was waiting for the police to come open the gate for us, I noticed that there were oysters attached to the side of the boat launch. I have never been to this site when the water was so low, so I hadn't noticed them before. I had noticed that there were oyster shells washed up on shore, but when I asked the workers who repair the pier if they had ever seen an oyster attached to the pier, they said no. This is a huge find because there are currently only a few places in New York City where oysters have actually been documented.

I also found an oyster attached to the pier piling. Next time I go to LaGuardia, I'm going to try to go during a negative tide so that I can explore a little more to see how many oysters there actually are.

I brought the spat collectors back to the office so that I would have time to sort through them and look at all of the organisms that had hitched a ride. This is a mud crab. As you can see it is aptly named because it is covered in mud. It also has one claw that is bigger than the other. I'm guessing that this is a black fingered mud crab. They are predators of young bivalves, such as oysters and can crush shells that are less than 0.5 inches.

This is some kind of marine worm. I need to do more research because I don't know what it is but it looks very similar to an earth worm. I've found it in every spat collector so far.

Here is a close up of the sea grapes. They are filter feeders and suck in water though one siphon and their wastes out the other. You can see the two siphons on the sea grape to the left. You can also see their internal organs through their clear bodies. Tunicates are actually our closest invertebrate relatives. In their larval form they posess a notocord but lose it once the develop into adults.

There were also four eel-like fish that were unfortunately hiding in the spat collectors that I think are actually American eel. My next post is going to be devoted to them because they are a species of concern because it is disappearing at a rapid rate due to overfishing, habitat loss, pollution and blocked migration routes.

I had found a few of these eels in the spat collectors before but the pictures that I had taken of them were terrible because the office camera can't take pictures up close. I had thought that these eels were actually conger eels, but these eels short noses make that impossible.

Here is a beautiful pink-pigmented amphipod. :)

A barnacle. Fun Fact: They are actually crustaceans. 

Sea anenome. 

That's all the organisms for now! Hopefully we'll find some spat next time. :)

New York Oysters on WNYC

Here's an informative talk on the oyster reef restoration efforts in New York City on the Brian Lehrer Show featuring Mark Kurlansky, author of the Big Oyster, and Professor Jeffrey Levinton from Stonybrook University.

Oyster Donation

You can donate to restore oyster reefs! : )
http://www.coastalamericafoundation.org/researchprograms.html

Long Island Lobster Fishing: Another Example of Overfishing and Environmental Degradation

This article in the NY Times about lobster fishing in Long Island reminded me of the lobster overfishing in the Dominican Republic. However, the situation is even more complex because the lobster population is decreasing it is thought due to climate change and the flusihg of pesticides released into the water to kill mosquitoes. There is also a bacterial invasion that causes deformities, which reduces the lobster's marketability.

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.