Save the Navesink River

   To our kind donors,

 

     After months of communication with the local environmental community, we are excited to announce that your generous donations will be used to clean the river with a more effective solution than previously anticipated! Instead of using the filter socks, we are teaming up with the American Littoral Society, a non-profit environmental organization located on Sandy Hook, to test for naturally occurring oysters in the rivers with the ultimate goal of reestablishing oyster reefs in the Navesink and Shrewsbury Rivers.  We decided to part from using the filter socks due to pessimism throughout the local environmental and political communities pertaining to their overall lack of effectiveness, as well as a number of liability concerns.

 

So, why oysters?

 

     Well, for starters , one oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water per day. And that's just one oyster. Imagine an entire reef of them on the bottom of the river, acting as mini powerful filters, and working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, cleaning the fecal contamination right out of the river.  Sounds too good to be true, right? And that’s not even the best part.  An ideal oyster reef is Self Maintaining, which means it is virtually maintenance free, so less money needs to be spent on labor and more can be spent on precious oysters.  

 


 

           Just to make things better, since oysters are an all natural non-invasive solution, there are no environmental downsides that will be caused by them. Instead, oysters provide ecosystems with countless benefits in addition to crystal-clear water.





Okay, okay. Oysters seem like the right move. But when is this all happening?

 

           The first steps of implementing Operation Oyster are starting this Friday, June 2 with the hanging of shell bags on docks in the Navesink and Shrewsbury Rivers.  These bags will be used to attract oyster larvae.  We can use all the volunteers we can get to help with monitoring as Citizen Scientists. If you are interested in helping save the river, please feel free to send one of us an email, or contact Pim at the American Littoral Society at [email redacted].  

 

           We would like to thank all of our generous donors for being patient, and we hope you are as excited as we are to get the ball rolling and to be one step closer to a cleaner river! If you have any questions about the oysters or the river in general, please don’t hesitate to send one of us, or the American Littoral Society, an email. We are happy to answer all questions.

 

Thank you all,

 

Noah Tucker   Tyler Lubin