Scientists Get Their Latest Look at Oysters Growing in Tribeca Waters

Scientists from the Hudson River Foundation, Billion Oyster Project and NY/NJ Baykeeper measure tiny oysters that are growing among shells encased in a wire basket on the river bottom. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib 

Aboard a small boat plying the Hudson River off of Tribeca last month, researchers holding measuring tools bent over a shell-packed cage and called out numbers.

“45, 8, 17, 29, 35…” 

Each figure represented the length, in centimeters, of a living oyster growing among the shells at the bottom of the river. It was one tiny success story after another. 

Twice a year, cages like this one, as well as concrete reef balls, both previously seeded with baby oysters, are pulled aboard the vessel. On deck, scientists from the Hudson River Park Trust’s River Project and its research partners, led by the Billion Oyster Project, study the development and numbers of the bivalves. 

As part of the Tribeca Habitat Enhancement Project, some 15 million oysters in various stages of maturity are now growing within the recently completed “habitat corridor” of reef structures, submerged along the Tribeca section of the Hudson River. Now three years into the five-year project, the researchers aim to study and rebuild the once abundant oyster habitats that centuries of over-harvesting and pollution had destroyed.

Oysters are important to the river's biodiversity. The reef structures—there are now nearly 300 of them marked above water by buoys—provide important habitats for fish and other aquatic creatures, said Carrie Roble, the River Project’s vice president. “So the structures become these ecosystems within themselves, layered with food and other plants and animals that then these fish eat.” As “filter feeders,” oysters also help to clean the river of toxins (the reason they won’t be edible).

When the shell-filled cage, called a gabion, is lifted from the deck to be returned to the river, scientists watch to see what animals fall out. “Our team from Hudson River Park will ID them and take them back for further examination and identification if needed. Otherwise we release them,” said the River Project’s Siddhartha Hayes, as researchers on the boat examined a tiny goby that had been living among the shells. Toadfish, skilletfish, cunners, black sea bass, and sponges are just a few of the creatures that are drawn to the newly created oyster reefs, Hayes said. 

“It’s exciting because along the corridor [between Piers 26 and 34] fish, crabs, and other mobile species are able to go from pier to pier now with the promise of habitat to forage off of and live in,” Roble said. “And that’s what we’re really hoping these structures provide over time, as the reef only grows.”