Nik Heynen is the internship coordinator and a board member of Shell to Shore, which transports oyster shells to be used in green infrastructure projects. 

Q: To start off, can you tell me about Shell to Shore’s mission and what you do?

A: Shell to Shore was imagined by two people named Hunt Revell and Tyler Leslie, who both used to work at Seabear Oyster Bar. They started to recognize that oyster shells were being thrown away and put into the waste stream, and that felt kind of like a crazy thing, given there were entities trying to purchase oyster shells to use to do habitat restoration. The idea was to experiment to see how getting the shell out of the kitchen and into a holding zone where we could start to collect them would happen. Over the last three years we’ve now increased to 25 restaurants between Athens, Augusta, and Atlanta. We collect the shell, store them, allow them to cure, which allows for the bacteria and other things on the shell to kind of cook off, so it doesn’t contaminate the water and then use the shell in green infrastructure projects that are about habitat restoration, and increasingly for us, sea level rise mitigation. 

Q: What does that curation process look like?

A: Currently it looks like about 75 pounds of shell in a green old recycling bin that we had gotten from CHaRM. They all sit over at UGArden. The Georgia state regulation is three months, but we like to say six months. The reality is that we have not put any of our shell yet in any projects, because we are partnering on Sapelo Island with an organization called “Save Our Legacy Ourself” led by Maurice Bailey, and we’re still engaged in the planning of what will be a very large-scale project. 

Q: I visited Sapelo Island in May, and I was able to learn about the sea level rise threatening the Gullah Geechee community there. Is that what you are planning to target with that project?

A: Precisely, yeah. Maurice Bailey is one of the Gullah Geechee leaders in the Hogg Hummock community. I’ve been working there for 10 years now with him on trying to revise heritage crops. It was through this recognition that a lot of the agriculture there was being threatened by sea level rise that we immediately started to partner, and why I was quickly recruited with Shell to Shore to help bridge those two communities. All the shell will go to Sapelo out in the marsh, and we’ve just received a 2.8 million dollar grant from NOAA that will help facilitate that project. 

Q: Is that your main role in Shell to Shore, bridging that gap between those communities? 

A: We all do all the stuff. It's a really, kind of, punk rock organization in that only one person involved draws a salary. Everyone else is volunteer. I'd say we all do everything. 

Q: Going forward, do you have any other goals that you're hoping to accomplish with Shell to Shore?

A: I think that eventually we intend to work with other communities. It's unclear when that will be. Our main priority right now is this partnership with Sapelo and Hogg Hummock.  

Comments trimmed for length and clarity