Solar Powered Electric Reef Brings Oysters Back

What a promising and innovative idea is this: use a bit of solar power and the ocean’s natural chemical composition to help rebuild the East Coast’s oyster population.

As have many other parts along the East Coast, the coastal regions of New York City just aren’t what they used to be in terms of biodiversity in general and oyster populations in particular. Oyster reefs used to cover hundreds of square miles off the shore before Europeans settled in the area, but they’re now pitiable shadow of their former selves. Worse still, when the oysters go, water quality suffers (thanks to the oyster’s prodigious water-filtering capabilities.)

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Marine biology professor James Cervino, though, thinks he might have stumbled upon a solution thanks, oddly enough to a dream of helix-shaped spirals rising out of the water. He’s ended up planting those helixes of metal in shallow water, where they’re connected to solar panels that generate a small electrical current. That current causes calcium carbonate in seawater to cake onto the metal poles, which then become the seeds of new oyster beds.

In a healthy oyster bed, new oysters simply latch onto the remains of previous oyster generations. But when the oyster population suffers, there’s no foundation of shells for the young mollusks to cling to. That’s where Cervino hopes his “Electric oyster reef project” can help.

So far, so good: Cervino’s finding healthy live oysters around the base of his electric reef installation, while the only oysters elsewhere in the area turn up dead.

You can read more about Cervino’s oyster “Eureka” moment at ABC News.

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