New Jersey halts oyster restoration projects
Pressured by the FDA to provide more vigilant oversight and worried that poachers may sell oysters from polluted coastal waters to consumers, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection has halted its oyster bed restoration projects. This, despite the fact that oyster beds are being deliberately restored to tainted bodies of water throughout the region to rid them of pollutants.
Hardest hit by the edict is the NY/NJ Baykeeper, an environmental group working with Rutgers University and others to restore the Hudson-Raritan Estuary, partly by re-establishing oyster beds in the tainted waters of the northern half of the state’s coast. Oysters are native, actually filter ocean water and, when healthy and successful, create natural reefs that attract other ocean life.
The Baykeeper will now have to remove oyster reefs it has tried to build up in Keyport Harbor and the Navesink River off Red Bank.
The FDA’s concerns about poaching are apparently related to threats posed to the shellfish industry as the BP oil spill further endangers fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico—further evidence of how changes in one ecosystem impact another, even far removed.
