Oysters Are Coming Back to Staten Island — But Not to Eat (Yet)

Staten Island was once an oyster capital of the United States. Oysters were harvested off the Island’s south shore, especially by Tottenville and Princes Bay.

But Typhoid Fever in 1916 was linked to Staten Island Oysters, and eating oysters from the dirty NY harbor was outlawed. It has remained outlawed since then.

Oysters of course, never left Staten Island. People who have walked the Staten Island shores know that you regularly find oyster shells on the beach. But you are not legally allowed to look for oysters off the shore and eat them.

Good news: the water in NY harbor is cleaner than ever, and plans are underway to bring a lot more oysters back in the NYC area — especially Staten Island.

However — it will be a long while before NYC legalizes the eating of Oysters from NY Harbor and off the Staten Island shore. But a project begun in 2018 called The Billion Oyster Project is well underway, whose goals are to:

1. Create “Living Breakwaters” and seed oyster beds so that they can help clean NY waters even further,
2. Develop an ecosystem of aquatic wildlife, and
3. Protect the shores from big waves.

The Billion Oyster Project & NY Harbor School

The Billion Oyster Project has been detailed by large graphic posters at the center of the Staten Island Ferry terminal — Staten Island side — since 2018.

There is a website. On the website it says “the Billion Oyster Project (BOP) is a long-term, large-scale plan to restore 1 billion live oysters to NY Harbor over the next 20 years, and in the process train thousands of young people in NYC to restore the ecology and economy of their local marine environment.”

But the goal is not to make oysters in NY Harbor legal to eat again. A blog on the website states, “every rainfall pulls hundreds of millions of gallons of untreated household wastewater (raw sewage) into the Harbor through the city’s Combined Sewer system. While the Harbor flushes these pollutants quickly, oysters cannot. By filtering these pollutants as they feed, oysters remain unsafe for human consumption all of the time”.

But some more good news: the blog points out that most oysters served in NYC restaurants come from Oyster Farms — which “receive their seed from hatcheries and grow oysters individually for consumption, normally in suspended structures – not reefs.” The shells of the eaten oysters are then used as a bed for young oysters to grow on. A win-win all around.

NY Harbor School

The Billion Oyster Project has been based at the NY Harbor School since its inception. The goal is to engage the youth in urban marine ecosystem restoration. The partnership also includes local, state, and federal regulatory agencies:

• The NYC Department of Environmental Protection,
• The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and
• The US Army Corps of Engineers.

The Army Corps of Engineers certifies and monitors the NY Harbor School aquaculture methodology and ongoing habitat restoration projects. Here is a video on the NY Harbor School.

The Living Breakwaters — By Pleasant Plains & Tottenville

A big part of The Billion Oyster Project is creation of new Living Breakwaters off the shore of Staten Island, in the Pleasant Plains/Tottenville area.

According to the large posters in the Staten Island Ferry terminal, “At the hear of the Living Breakwater Project are the Living Breakwaters themselves, a system of nearshore breakwaters designed to:

• Reduce coastal risk,
• Create habitat for fish and other marine organisms, and
• Foster social resilience by supporting stewardship and education about harbor ecology, coastal risk, and climate change.”

So yes there’s a bit of Global Warming hysteria intertwined with the project — but it is still a noble effort and good idea — to re-introduce a naturally-cleaning oyster habitat off the shores of Staten Island.

As of this writing — November 2024 — if you go to the beach by Sprague Avenue in Tottenville (drive down Hylan Blvd just past the Tottenville Pool, hand a left and go to the beach) — you will see the breakwaters.

You can also see the crane being used to build the breakers.

According to the sign at the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, the Living Breakwaters provide the following (see text below for details):

• Wave Attenuation: Approaching waves break on the breakwater, reducing the height and energy of waves before they reach the shore. Modeling shows that the Living Breakwaters can provide significant reductions in wave heights reaching shore even in severe events like Superstorm Sandy, thus reducing risk to people and potential damage to on-shore structures.
• Reef Streets: These rocky protrusions and the spaces between them extend from the main body of the breakwater segment toward the ocean side, creating semi-sheltered habitat for fish and other aquatic species to feed and take refuge from predators. Rocks and bio-enhancing concrete units are strategically placed to create complex structured habitat.
• Energy Dissipation: Spaces between armor units allow for the movement of water and absorption of energy by the breakwater structure.
• Habitat Complexity: The complexity and variety of the rocky aquatic habitat created by the breakwaters will provide new opportunities for aquatic species, increasing biodiversity in an area where reef-like habitat has largely been lost.
• Emergent Habitat: Above Mean High Water (MHW) the breakwater side slope and crest create opportunities for perching birds and potentially haul-out areas for harbor seals.
• Lee Side Habitat: Calmer waters on the lee or landward side of the breakwaters help to create new habitat opportunities for species like eel grass, crabs, and hard clams, as well as provide safer waters for recreation.
• Oyster Nursery: The Living Breakwaters create many opportunities for restoration. Calmer waters on the lee side are prime conditions for a separate effort that includes the cultivation of oysters and their natural re-population in the surrounding area.
• Wider Beaches: By decreasing everyday wave action, the breakwaters enable the shoreline to retain and accrete sand over time, reducing and in many places reversing patterns of historic erosion.
• On-Shore Risk Reduction: In the future, with wider beaches and less energy reaching the shoreline, we anticipate less storm damage to buildings, dunes, and other structures.
• Beach Habitat: Wider beaches will provide additional help needed for horseshoe crab spawning, and will provide food, in the form of horseshoe for birds and the Red Knot bird.

Clean Water

The water in New York Harbor is cleaner now than at any time in the last 100 years, according to the NYC Board of Environmental Protection (DEP). It sites that it is due to continued improvements to wastewater handling and treatment. It operates 14 wastewater treatment plants that together treat around 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater and biosolids each day, and has a fleet of boats that are used to monitor the waters and shoreline for water quality and sources of pollution. Here is a video of the DEP at work.

On top of that, NYC stopped its practice of dumping garbage and sludge into the ocean in 1992. Before that, NYC used to drag garbage out into the ocean using barges, and dump it. A lot of the garbage would eventually end up on the NYC beaches.

Because of these efforts, the beaches on Staten Island are cleaner than ever; you can tell the water is cleaner by just looking at it — it seems pristine:

Staten Island Was Once an Oyster Capital

A detailed article on Staten Island’s past as an Oyster Capital is here. Below is the skinny on that article:

1. Native American Indians Harvested Oysters: Native American Indians harvested oysters off the coast of Staten Island. The Lenape tribe — specifically the Tappan, Hackensack, and Raritan sub-tribes — traveled from the mainland to Staten Island to feast on oysters and also used them to make jewelry, including of course the pearls found in oysters.
2. Oystering Was Chief Industry on the Island in 1700’s – 1800’s: By 1825, oystering and farming were the 2 chief industries of Staten Island. According to the 1939 book, Staten Island and Its People: A History, by Charles Leng and William Davis. The book is now available in public domain and free to download.
3. Over-Harvesting in 1700’s: Over-harvesting of Oysters caused Staten Island to enact laws, starting in the early 1700’s — to only harvest oysters from April thru September, and to mandate that only Staten Islanders could harvest oysters on Staten Island — amongst many other laws.
4. Seeding for Oysters in 1830’s in Princes Bay: Staten Island oystermen started seed planting — wherein tiny, immature oysters were imported from areas that still had an overabundance of oysters — such as the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland and Norfolk Bay in Virginia — and planted in the waters off Staten Island.
5. Oyster Business Led to Other Industries on Staten Island: The Oyster Seeding industry transformed Staten Island. It led to spin-off businesses, such as shipbuilding and ironworking, which created the towns of Tottenville and Mariner’s Harbor. The captains of the ships used to import the oyster seedlings, and to export Staten Island oysters to other areas — became known as Oyster Captains — and they became quite rich.
6. Staten Island Oysters in Demand During Civil War: Staten Island’s oysters became even more in demand because it was impossible to get oysters from Virginia and the South.
7. Typhoid Fever Traced to Staten Island Oysters in 1916: The industrial revolution and large increase in population (and sewage) in NYC caused the waters of NY harbor to be more and more polluted. In 1916 the Typhoid Fever epidemic hit — and it was traced to Staten Island oysters. The NYC Health Department officially condemned the oyster beds. The Oyster Industry died.