Billion Oyster Project
ABOUT THE CLASS
Instructor: Ms. Sylvie (sylvie.lam@bugsbrooklyn.org)
Did you know oysters are amazing natural filters? Adults can filter twenty-four gallons of water per day. Oysters were once a key species of New York Harbor for this reason and because their reefs provided valuable marine habitat while protecting shorelines.
Our class grows and monitors oysters to help the Billion Oyster Project bring this mollusk back. Students do hands on work in the field and classroom to learn how our waterways connect currents of local and global sustainability. At our Bush Terminal Park Oyster Research Station (ORS) students collect data on oyster growth, water chemistry, and biodiversity. At our Classroom Oyster Research Station (CORS) students monitor tank conditions, observe filtration rates, identify species in its ecosystem, and feed oysters phytoplankton — the base of life in our oceans playing an essential role in the global carbon cycle. Students learn about the social history of oysters, and how Native Americans used wild oysters from salt marshes later turned into the Gowanus Canal.
The world is our oyster! We'll consider what that means now, when BUGS students are stewards of their world and its oysters.
FALL & WINTER 2017
Our Oyster Research Station (ORS) at Bush Terminal Park (BTP) houses live oysters
On our Gowanus Canal walking tour students asked Mr. Christos Tsiamis, the engineer overseeing Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) dredging, about its distinctive smell
Our Classroom Oyster Research Station (CORS) is a ten-gallon tank started with harbor water from BTP and larvae of several species
A mollusk mystery hinges on the identify of a species that grew on the tank wall
We used microscopes to observe plankton and zooplankton like these copepods
Shell middens yield archaeological clues about how Native Americans used oysters
Students made ceramic oyster art
Hokule'a's voyage round the world using only traditional Pacific Islander navigation is a sustainability project we learned about
SPRING 2018
As weather warms up for more field expeditions, students have chosen two main research projects
One focuses on biodiversity in the classroom tank
The second focuses on oyster filtration and water turbidity
We're making time lapse videos to study filtration in small tanks
"Before" test image taken after students added two milliliters of phytoplankton to the tanks
"After" test image roughly an hour later shows how filtration changed water clarity and turbidity
Oyster filtration increases clarity and decreases turbidity. The class is experimenting with a visual system of measurement as an alternative to Secchi disks used in turbidity tubes.
Go oysters!
Class work in the 2018 Gowanus Expo
Ceramic models of huge Gowanus shells, circa 1600, when wild oysters thrived
May expedition to the ORS at BTP with the Statue of Liberty on the horizon
We observed oysters trying to grow wild before returning them to the harbor
Our class participated in the 2018 BOP STEM Symposium on Governors Island, where students from all over NYC shared their amazing research with the BOP community
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Congrats on a job well done and being recognized with one of only ten symposium awards given! A few students who couldn't make the trip were missed!
Our tank oysters will spend the summer in the harbor near wild oysters