By Alexandra Talty, Pulitzer fellow, for Civil Eats.
Broadcast version by Edwin J. Viera for New York News Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

Rebecca Genia walks out into Shinnecock Bay at low tide with a few of her great-grandchildren, using her feet to find hard-shelled quahogs buried in the sand. As a kid, she could fill a trash can with the blue-lipped mollusks in less than an hour-and could also gather other shellfish like oysters, mussels, or scallops, depending on the season.

Now, she says, "it takes us a while to even get a couple of dozen clams. That's not right." She points out that most of the shellfish she harvests these days have been seeded manually by the town of Southampton and local universities, "almost like a science project," she says. "The natural way has been contaminated and polluted by mankind."

What's also not right: the quality of the quahogs. "The shells are so brittle," she says. The increasingly acidic water in the bay makes it hard for the clams to build strong shells. She points to her necklace of wampum-mollusk-shell beads that are integral to Eastern Woodland Native American culture. Hers is a single large indigo-and-white pendant, half an inch thick, the way shells used to be.

Genia, a member of the Shinnecock Nation, has lived along these waters on the South Fork of Long Island, New York, for most of her life. Shellfish are a traditional food source for the Shinnecock; they were also once the backbone of Long Island's robust commercial fishing industry. Her tribe witnessed the crash of the clam and scallop fishery in the 1990s and then another crash in the 2000s, which further depleted shellfish stocks and threatened the nascent farmed oyster industry. Both were caused by massive blooms of harmful algae.

In 2020, after watching the decline of Shinnecock Bay-a body of water that has fed her tribe for some 13,000 years-Genia worked with Tela Troge, a tribal lawyer, to form the Shinnecock Kelp Farmers, a group of five Indigenous women who grow kelp to fight climate change. The group hopes to heal their afflicted bay and inspire a new generation to adopt more regenerative practices on the water. "We want our children to be able to go out there and clam and collect oysters and scallops and mussels like we used to," says Genia. Plus, Shinnecock women are water protectors, she says, and being out on the bay is "in our DNA."

The women's move toward seaweed as a solution is emblematic of a shift across the country as the world's oceans change faster than scientists ever expected. Since the 1990s, ocean acidification-caused by more carbon in the atmosphere dissolving into the sea, among other factors-has increased at alarming rates; in the U.S., the West Coast is especially impacted. Increased acidification means crustaceans in their critical larval stage cannot pull enough calcium carbonate from the water to create shells.

By 2015, acidification had become so significant globally that the United Nations addressed the crisis as part of its Sustainable Development Goal 14: Life Below Water. Their guidelines have spurred government investment, university research, and private interest to tackle acidification ever since.

Nitrogen-rich wastewater, another byproduct of rapid human development, feeds huge blooms of algae (known as "red tides" or "brown tides," depending on the species) that starve other marine life of oxygen. Some algal blooms produce toxins that make shellfish unsafe to eat. The blooms are a particular problem in shallow waterways like Shinnecock Bay.

These twin phenomena of acidification and algal blooms are deadly for all crustaceans, including shellfish. And they can spell disaster for coastal communities, as 3 billion people globally rely on "blue foods" from the ocean, including shellfish, as a primary source of protein.

But recent scientific studies show that as the ocean becomes unfriendly for shellfish, seaweed could offer a solution-in particular, the large brown algae called kelp. Wild kelp forests form the most extensive marine-vegetated ecosystems in the world. They grow on every continent except Antarctica and provide habitat and food for the ocean's smallest creatures to its largest.

Rich in minerals, kelp grows quickly and doesn't require fertilizer. It isn't seriously affected by acidification or algal blooms, and in some cases, it can even mitigate their impact on shellfish, because kelp soaks up excess nutrients like nitrogen and increases oxygenation in the waters around it. What's more, the fibrous plant, which can grow two feet a day, also pulls anywhere from five to 20 times more carbon from the atmosphere than any terrestrial crop, something that leading marine scientists are working to quantify right now.

Because of these beneficial properties, kelp is being hailed as a miracle, a panacea for the climate crisis. Scientists, coastal governments, and private industry alike think it could be the cornerstone of a new, blue economy that allows coastal communities in the United States to transition from extractive industries into more sustainable ones.

Bolstered by roughly $380 million in investments since 2018, kelp farmers have proliferated from around zero in 2012 to 108 active farms in 2023, according to Connecticut Sea Grant, part of a national network of university-based programs dedicated to encourage stewardship of marine resources. Seaweed farming, a longstanding tradition in Asia for more than a hundred years, is now gaining a place on U.S. shores.

The Scientists Who Kickstarted American Kelp Farming

The science behind this boom in seaweed cultivation began in New England nearly 50 years ago.

Charles Yarish, now a visiting scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts, is considered the father of American seaweed farming. Gregarious and welcoming, Yarish can talk kelp nonstop. In 1976, as a new assistant professor at the University of Connecticut's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and also its Department of Marine Sciences, Yarish became increasingly fascinated by kelp's ability to pull nutrients from the water column. He suspected that farming kelp and other seaweeds could help alleviate water quality issues.

Toiling away at his Connecticut laboratory and conducting experiments in the Long Island Sound, Yarish spent the next few decades proving this hypothesis, focusing mostly on how kelp can pull nitrogen from waterways. "The farming of seaweeds such as kelp not only has business applications but is terribly important for ecosystem services, removing [excess] nutrients from ocean waters and lowering pH," he explained.

Those early studies have impacted the growth of mariculture studies globally. At UConn, Yarish established an internationally known Seaweed Marine Biotechnology Laboratory, and was tapped to advise the Department of Energy's current MARINER Program, which has invested $66 million in seaweed aquaculture since 2018.

In 2016, scientists in Maine, alarmed by their state's warming waters and increasing acidification, and inspired in part by Yarish's early work, began studying whether kelp could provide a sanctuary for shellfish. Using the country's first-ever commercial kelp farm in Casco Bay and funded by a constellation of government, nonprofit, and academic groups, the effort was led by Nichole Price and her team at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences.

After three years, they determined that co-growing blue mussels with sugar kelp-Saccharina latissima, the go-to variety of farmed seaweed for colder North American waters-led to increased oxygenation in the water. The scientists also documented kelp's ability to locally raise seawater pH, which allowed the mussels to build thicker shells despite the acidic waters.

Price dubbed this the "halo effect" of kelp. She plans to continue monitoring outcomes to see how farms will fare in the future, since Maine's waters are predicted to be too acidic for shellfish to calcify for most of the year by 2030.

Price said evidence is growing to support the idea that co-growing shellfish and seaweeds can offset the impact of climate change. The scientific field is tackling some big questions that could benefit the kelp farming industry. Including, she said, "Is it a consistent halo effect, or is it only in these protected bays? Or does it depend on the size of the kelp farm? If it's a really big kelp farm, can it still create a halo even in exposed areas?"

While scientists race to understand the best growing methods for seaweeds with shellfish, the co-growing concept has been widely marketed by Bren Smith of GreenWave, who was first introduced to kelp by Yarish in 2013, after Smith's oyster farms on Long Island Sound were decimated by hurricanes. Smith's brand of co-growing focuses on a polyculture ocean farming model that combines shellfish with seaweed, an idea that he propagated in a book, Eat Like a Fish, and in GreenWave's instruction manuals for "regenerative ocean farming," which the group said thousands have used.

Although scientists on both coasts are still studying the effects of co-growing kelp with shellfish species like oysters-which fetch higher market value but generally grow in different environments than kelp-Smith promoted the idea of growing shellfish and oysters together, and is widely known in the industry for popularizing this approach.

Growing shellfish alongside seaweeds or finfish is a practice long used in Asia, especially China. However, it has been slower to catch on in the U.S., in part because of the lack of trials here. Inspired by the Asian approach and by Price's work in Maine, in 2018 marine scientist Chris Gobler began focusing on kelp's potential to heal his local waterways in New York, where algal blooms posed a bigger threat than acidification.

Eastern Long Island in particular was burdened with aging, failing septic systems that leached nitrogen into groundwater and ponds, lakes, rivers, streams, and bays. That excess nutrient runoff, combined with warmer waters, essentially fertilized the growth of harmful algal blooms yet again that year. Large swaths of open water were closed to shellfish harvesters by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

Although Price was studying the co-raising of kelp with mussels to offset acidification, there was no scientific evidence yet to show how kelp could help shellfish during algal blooms. Gobler, working out of Long Island's Stony Brook University laboratory, thought that kelp might benefit oysters. Aided by Michael Doall, a former commercial oyster grower-turned scientist who'd devised a way of growing kelp in shallow waters, Gobler launched a three-year study in 2019, hoping to find a solution for Long Island's troubled waters that could be applied on both coasts.

By 2022, he had his answer: "We've learned the seaweeds can inhibit harmful algal bloom and even represent a direct food source for the bivalves as they slough off microbial cells."

What's more, Gobler's lab had proved that raising kelp with oysters led to faster-growing, healthier shellfish. Gobler dubbed the phenomena the "halo effect"-a nod to Price's studies-noting that the kelp around oyster cages provided a "halo" of increased oxygenation to the oysters as the kelp grew. At the same time, the kelp removed excess nitrogen from the water column. Backed by Gobler's studies and studies from Price at Bigelow Labs in Maine, the idea of raising shellfish with kelp is now spreading across the country, including to the West Coast, where acidification is even more pronounced.

A Kelp-Farming Breakthrough

In 2018, seaweed experts believed that sugar kelp, a large brown seaweed with furled, silky tendrils, could only be farmed at depth-as it was in Maine, the center of the seaweed industry. If sugar kelp could only grow in deep water, it couldn't be deployed for oyster farms, which are often tucked into shallower nooks of rocky coasts or set up in shallow bays.

Michael Doall, a scientist at Gobler's laboratory, solved the problem. A former oyster grower, he saw the business potential for a crop that not only had ecosystem benefits but could be harvested in winter, opposite the main harvesting time of summer for oysters-providing two income streams from the same patch of water.

To pave the way for a kelp-meets-oysters business model that would work on Long Island, Doall decided to try growing kelp in shallower waters. In December 2018, accompanied by oyster farmer Paul McCormack, Doall began an experiment on Long Island's Great South Bay. The two men sank metal screw anchors into the sandy sea floor and strung long nylon lines, inoculated with kelp spores, between them. And then they waited.

Over the next few months, the kelp not only grew, but outperformed their predictions. Doall and McCormack were ecstatic. "It worked really freaking great," recalled Doall. Gobler, using the findings, then put sugar kelp to work in his breakthrough kelp-and-oyster co-raising study.

Using Doall's growing techniques and the science from Yarish and Gobler's laboratories, at least 10 sites across New York are now using sugar kelp to pull excess nutrients out of the waterways. They are also collaborating on a recently proposed $700 million project at Governor's Island that relies in part on seaweed farming to help prepare New York City for climate change.

Although seaweed grown as a bioremediation strategy cannot be used for human consumption-in some cases, as with RETI Center's project in the Gowanus Canal, the kelp harvested showed high traces of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), a known carcinogen-scientists are experimenting with other potential uses for it, such as a kelp-based concrete.

Kelp Farming for a Tribe's Future

The first group to raise seaweed using Doall's shallow-water technique were the Shinnecock Kelp Farmers. In 2020, led by Tela Troge, the women began growing kelp in the bay that surrounds Shinnecock Tribal Territory Nation, roughly 900 acres of low-lying sandy land. For millennia, the tribe has lived, fished, and harvested shellfish on this bay. Mitigating climate change and rising water is crucial to their survival, and seaweed offers a way to do that.

"We are a frontline community and we have nowhere else to go," said Danielle Hopson Begun, communications director and hatchery manager for Shinnecock Kelp Farmers. Hopson Begun is equally comfortable out on the bay or giving public talks, where she spreads the climate-saving mission of the group.

"When you're hearing on the news about sea rise and acidification and you're able to move yourself from Southampton Village to higher ground-good for you. It is not good for us," Hopson Begun said. "For us, it [is] a moral imperative to preserve our way of life."

To start their nonprofit, Shinnecock Kelp Farmers worked with GreenWave and Doall, who provided sorus tissue, the reproductive area of the kelp blade, for propagation. They found a home for their hatchery in a wooden cabin at the nearby St. Joseph's Villa, a summer retreat for nuns. The wooded estate overlooks Shinnecock Bay, which now holds their kelp lines. For the 2023-2024 season, the farmers planted 30 lines at 100 feet each, a crisscross of golden-brown algae ribbons dancing beneath the water. As a sovereign nation, the Shinnecock did not need New York State's permission to begin farming, and in 2020, they became the first seaweed growers in the state.

The group dries and processes their kelp by hand, turning the slippery curls of seaweed into hundreds of pounds of nitrogen-rich soil amendment that they use for gardening, sharing it with the local community at farmers' markets. They lay the kelp out in donated screens, or along the pool fence at St. Joseph's Villa, first washing the salt off the seaweed and then waiting for the sun to bake the kelp down.

Eventually, the heat crumbles the kelp into a dry, brown powder that plants love. Through this process, the nitrogen sequestered from the water column returns to the soil, a closed-loop nitrogen cycle now in vogue with organic farmers-although Shinnecock have been growing crops using seaweed as fertilizer for thousands of years, said Hopson Begun. Seeing the decline of seaweed in the bay in recent years, and knowing its benefits to shellfish, prompted them to start farming seaweed themselves.

While satisfying, the work is demanding, sometimes requiring the women to get up and work in frigid waters at dawn. For a recent November planting, they waded into 38-degree water during the first snow of the season, unspooling their kelp string as a hushed snow fell. But Hopson Begun wouldn't trade it for anything. She said, "I love seeing something so small grow into something really incredibly powerful that potentially can make a big difference."

Is Kelp the Answer for West Coast Shellfish?

On the West Coast, nitrogen pollution poses less of a problem, a benefit of the Pacific coast's deeper water and colder ocean temperatures. But acidification episodes are much more acute here than in the East: Since the 1990s, it's been rising precipitously, owing to a combination of increased carbon in the atmosphere and upwellings of deep waters that are rich in nutrients, but also relatively acidic. Many shelled creatures have been suffering as a result, unable to form thick, protective shells.

In 2007, this reached a crisis: Oyster businesses were devastated up and down the West Coast because baby bivalves simply could not grow.

"When it came time for our [oyster seed] orders to come in, the hatchery said, 'We had a complete crash. If anything survived, we are going to be supplying our own farms, not you,'" recalled Terry Sawyer, co-founder of Hog Island Oyster Co., a Northern California favorite for its shellfish-focused restaurants. "We were sitting there, flapping in the wind."

Trained in marine biology, Sawyer is an entrepreneur and lifelong ocean lover. When he and his co-founder, John Finger, realized how catastrophic the situation was, it spurred them to embrace a whole new outlook on marine conservation. Hog Island now regularly hosts marine scientists to study the effects of warming waters on nearby marine life. The company also collaborates with the Central & Northern California Ocean Observing System, providing real-time data from their farm on ocean acidification as part of a global effort to understand why the ocean is changing so fast.

Acidification led Hog Island, based on Tomales Bay, just north of San Francisco, to establish their own hatchery further north in Humboldt Bay, so they could ensure their whole line of production, from larvae to finished oyster. The process took about three years, and cost $125,000 in permitting fees alone, paid to the California Coastal Commission. Sawyer said the decision was the only way they've survived a situation that is cyclical for West Coast waters. Hog Island buffers the water at their hatchery by adding soda ash to make intake seawater less acidic, allowing the larvae to grow. The technique is now common practice; West Coast farmed bivalves cannot grow in the open ocean anymore.

"I love to say, 'If we have a problem, we have to figure out how to eat it,'" said Sawyer, pointing out that seaweeds are a "winner" crop if ocean acidification continues to rise. "We are going to need to look at organisms that aren't as impacted by pH change." For now, though, Sawyer has to wait to unfurl kelp lines in Humboldt Bay, as the California Coastal Commission has no regulatory process for inshore commercial seaweed operations.

Instead, Hog Island has been collaborating with GreenWave and The Nature Conservancy on a non-commercial research pilot study since 2021, growing bull kelp at the Hog Island hatchery in Humboldt Bay. The waters are notably less acidic near the kelp lines-a promising result as the Hog Island team waits for California's permitting structure to change for a commercial kelp farm.

The Promise of Seagrass

Tessa Hill, a professor of marine science at U.C. Davis and author of the book At Every Depth: Our Growing Knowledge of the Changing Oceans, has dedicated her life to understanding how climate change is affecting the ocean. Hill conducted a study in Tomales Bay and found that seagrass "meadows" there also offset acidification, and could increase shell growth by up to 40 percent. She sees the same value in seaweed. "There is a lot of potential for co-culture of seaweeds and shellfish" in the bay, she said.

However, wild West Coast seagrass meadows and kelp forests are declining, and that makes Hill very worried. Subjected to stress from marine heat, acidification, pollution, predation by sea urchins, and human encroachment, these water-based ecosystems may lose their power to help fight ocean warming. "The more we protect habitats like seagrass meadows and salt marshes, the better chance we have at climate mitigation," said Hill. She sees promise in seaweed farming for the same reasons.

Helpful marine organisms-like sugar kelp, bull kelp, and seagrass-could help reduce some of the worst climate impacts that scientists are documenting on the U.S. coasts. Raised in quantity, they could bring at least some stretches of shoreline back into balance, allowing marine life to thrive again in our waters.

The Shinnecock Kelp Farmers are starting to see it happen, bit by bit. "The most darling was a little tiny scallop that took up space on one of our lines. They're endangered," said Danielle Hopson Begun. "To see that little guy holding to and finding a place in our farm was very satisfying."


Alexandra Talty wrote this article for Civil Eats.


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By Grace Hussain for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Shanteya Hudson for Georgia News Connection reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

In April 2019, Chris Eubanks, head of the animal rights group Apex Advocacy, chanted along with a group of other activists in front of the city government building in Lithonia, Georgia. The local activists had been campaigning to shut down Bradford’s Livestock — a backyard slaughterhouse operated in the center of their small, predominantly Black community — since 2014. Eubanks joined in 2021, lending Apex’s resources and giving the campaign a highly needed energy boost. Right down the street from the public school and around the block from a church, the facility killed roughly 100 animals every month.

Though local to the area, Eubanks had been completely unaware of the campaign. “I’ve been doing this for years,” he tells Sentient. Yet the presence of the backyard slaughterhouse in the small Atlanta suburb caught even Eubanks by surprise. “I didn’t realize that there was a slaughterhouse five minutes from where I live[d].”

Late last year, the coalition finally accomplished their goal, thanks in part to Apex Advocacy. For Eubanks, his prior lack of awareness that there was a slaughterhouse in his backyard is indicative of a larger issue within the animal rights movement: not paying close enough attention to Black and Brown communities, and the issues they face.

By the time Eubanks entered the picture, community activists like Jan Costello had already been campaigning for years. In addition to her activism, Costello was working with the community development corporation at the time, encouraging new businesses to move to the area. Despite activists’ dedication, they struggled to overcome the numerous roadblocks they faced, largely due to a lack of time and resources to dedicate toward their campaign — the two things Apex Advocacy was poised to provide.

Grassroots Activists Working in Tandem With Community Members

In the years before Eubanks got involved, local activists attended council meetings, maintained an email list of more than 1,000 community members, kept meticulous records of exactly what the facility was doing and spoke to neighbors about the slaughterhouse operating in their backyards, says Costello. Their tactics relied heavily on the fact that the slaughterhouse was violating zoning laws by being located in a residential neighborhood.

Their efforts helped get the facility slapped with a cease and desist order from the county’s Department of Planning in 2019, but because the facility had a license from the state’s Department of Agriculture, it continued to operate, killing thousands more animals.

Problematic Optics

When Eubanks saw coverage of the situation on a local news channel, he knew he had to help. The news segment made it look like locals were “trying to take advantage of a small, Black business owner,” says Eubanks, and there was much more going on. “The news coverage didn’t help as much as the advocates in the community thought it would.”

What it did do was grab Eubanks’ attention, leading him to reach out to Costello.

“He brought in so much energy and advocacy at a point when we were just basically doing the same old thing,” Costello says. By leveraging Apex Advocacy’s network, the activists were able to flood officials’ emails with thousands of messages. “Although we got support from the outside, the foundation was community-based,” says Eubanks.

Focusing on Zoning Violations, Not Animal Rights

Despite most of the core group of advocates being animal rights activists, “we were just focusing on the zoning aspect of the law,” says Costello. “We were very careful not to turn this into an argument about the slaughtering of animals for consumption,” she continues, “because that wasn’t the law. [Bradford] could do that business, but just not there in the neighborhood.”

The major roadblock to their success came via the very legal system they relied upon to shutter the slaughterhouse due to zoning violations. Part of the problem was that the state issued the facility a license to operate as a custom exempt processing facility — meaning they couldn’t sell meat. “The slaughterhouse owner was able to use the loophole that he wasn’t selling meat, but selling the service of killing animals,” says Eubanks.

As critics pointed out, the facility was in fact offering entire animals for sale via Facebook. While the license didn’t remedy the local zoning problem, it did lend some legitimacy to the slaughterhouse’s operations — a fact the facility took full advantage of.

In response to the 2019 cease and desist order from the county, Bradford’s Livestock sued in 2020, arguing they had the right to use the land the way they saw fit. The legal team did their best to drag the case out as long as possible by repeatedly filing for extensions — an effort made easier by COVID. Dekalb county filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit in June 2020.

While the case was decided, the slaughterhouse continued to operate, killing thousands more animals, according to the activists’ records. “When you’re trying to advocate for something that’s right, and it takes that long to get action, you create and breed cynicism in your group of supporters,” says Costello.

Activists Believe Race Drew the Closure Out

Eubanks suspects his joining the campaign leant it additional legitimacy within the community. “I think it was an opportunity to show that this isn’t a group of white people attacking a Black business, because that was the narrative beforehand,” he says.

Still, one factor that Eubanks believes heavily influenced the lack of urgency to get the slaughterhouse closed was race. Lithonia is “a small, Black community,” says Eubanks. “We really do believe that if this had been another community, a more affluent community, it would have definitely been shut down,” he says. “If this had been a more powerful community this would have been an issue that was shut down immediately.”

The lack of attention paid to Black and Brown communities has been an issue for social movements for generations. Environmental groups often ignore Indigenous communities, feminists often ignore Black women and animal rights advocates often overlook slaughterhouses in majority-Black neighborhoods.

“The animal rights community needs to make sure that we are not operating in a bubble and that we are pulling in the people,” Eubanks says. In recent years, the animal rights movement has shifted toward paying more attention to inclusion, with many organizations being more intentional about issues of equity and justice in how they allocate their resources.

Meanwhile, recent research suggests that animal-centered protests may actually backfire, leading some activists to shift towards putting the emphasis on arguments other than animal rights — such as zoning laws. 

Part of the evolving movement is also about increasing buy-in from Black and Brown communities. Apex recently launched a movement guide on why food systems issues are specifically important to marginalized racial groups, and if animal rights groups want to be more effective, they’d be wise to take note.


Grace Hussain wrote this article for Sentient.


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The Environmental Protection Agency has banned the pesticide dacthal, frequently used on farms in West Virginia and other states.

Mounting evidence shows the chemical affects the thyroid system of pregnant women, and is linked to babies born with low birth weight, bone problems, and reduced IQ.

The EPA first issued a warning about the pesticide earlier this year, and temporarily suspended its use over the summer. The agency became concerned about Dacthal, also known as DCPA, around 2013.

The EPA instructed the company that produces it to study its impact on human health.

Bill Jordan volunteers with the Environmental Protection Network, and is former deputy director of the EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs.

"The action EPA took, with regard to DCPA, is really bold and really aggressive," said Jordan. "This is the first time in nearly 40 years that EPA has issued an emergency suspension order."

Dacthal is commonly used to kill weeds on crops like cabbage, onions, broccoli, and brussels sprouts. Farmworkers, particularly those who are pregnant, are at high risk.

First registered for use as a pesticide in 1958, people also spray Dacthal on parks, athletic fields, and other public spaces.

Jordan said he expects Dacthal to be out of the nation's food system by the end of next year, but said regulators have their work cut out for them when it comes to investigating pesticide safety.

"They've got a huge amount of work to do, to re-examine - as the law requires - all registered pesticides within a 15 year period," said Jordan. "And every year, Congress is cutting back on the resources that EPA has to do that."

Research shows widespread pesticide use is linked to the rise in cancer rates, and the decline in soil health and biodiversity.

Dacthal is just one active ingredient among thousands, in more than 17,000 pesticide products in the U.S. according to the group Beyond Pesticides.





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By Isabelle Atkins for Grady Newsource.
Broadcast version by Shanteya Hudson for Georgia News Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

When Hunt Revell and Tyler Leslie worked at Seabear Oyster Bar in Athens, they were struck by how many oyster shells they threw in the trash each day. The duo didn't yet know that these shells could be tools for coastal restoration, but they knew throwing them away seemed wasteful.

Through the help of industry professionals, Revell and Leslie discovered that oysters play a vital role in marine ecosystems. They are what's called a keystone species, an organism that other marine life depends on. Oysters filter water, reduce carbon, combat rising sea levels and foster biodiversity. All those oyster shells discarded by restaurants are the perfect material for baby oysters to attach onto to build more oyster reefs.

Three years ago, their curiosity and a grant from the Nature Conservancy led to the creation of Shell to Shore, a nonprofit organization based in Athens that is dedicated to oyster shell recycling.

Soon after Shell to Shore was established, Revell and Leslie brought on University of Georgia Distinguished Research Professor Nik Heynen as a board member, and Malcolm Provost as the recycling coordinator.

"One fun fact that we like to throw at people is that one full-grown oyster can filter 50 gallons of water per day," Provost said. So imagine what an entire oyster reef can do.

The nonprofit started out very grassroots-oriented, collecting from Seabear Oyster Bar and then expanding to restaurants like Five and Ten and, most recently, Square One. While they have continued to diligently work with Athens' restaurants, their reach has expanded to other cities, including Augusta, Savannah and Atlanta.

Thomas Bliss, director of UGA Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant's Shellfish Research Laboratory, has been collecting and recycling oyster shells on Skidaway Island for about 20 years.

"It's really great to see a group like Shell to Shore start up because we've been collecting on the coast, but we're very coastal-centric," Bliss said. "It's nice to see a group start to reach those inland areas where we don't have the capacity to always get to."

According to Noah Brendel, co-owner of Seabear Oyster Bar, this relationship is not only benefiting Georgia's coastline but also the restaurants themselves.

"The fact that we can say that we don't throw our shells into the landfill and we actually send them back to the coast to help with different initiatives that are all sustainable, I think bodes well for us. It is good PR," Brendel said.

Shell to Shore also provides opportunities for local restaurants to meet. Fausto Zamorano, chef de cuisine at Five and Ten, has enjoyed ShellFest, an annual fundraising event put on by Shell to Shore with live music, local drinks, and of course, oysters.

"It has been a really good networking opportunity. When they did their first ShellFest festival in 2022...it was a chance to meet other chefs and local restaurants," Zamorano said. "We all love to be a part of it."

According to Seabear Oyster Bar and Five and Ten staff, the act of putting the shells into a separate bin for Shell to Shore to collect adds a mere five minutes to their routine. As long as the shells don't accumulate for too long, which could cause an odor, the protocol creates little to no inconvenience.

In 2023, Shell to Shore recycled more than 72,000 pounds of oyster shells, bringing their three-year total to about 130,000 pounds of recycled shells.

After collecting the shells from the restaurants, they are brought to UGArden, a community farm, where they are dumped into blue and green bins. Just as the shellfish lab that Bliss directs, the shells are then cured by exposure to six months of sun and rain. This process promotes bacterial degradation of the soft tissue and after, Georgia law says the shells can be safely introduced into water systems without fear of microbial contamination.

Shell to Shore takes the shells to Sapelo Island, about 70 miles south of Savannah. However, finding the exact site to situate the shells has posed challenges. The primary sites the team identified were not viable to place incoming shells because there weren't enough oyster larvae.

Shell to Shore continues to work with Marine Extension and the Department of Natural Resources to find areas along the coast that have high enough oyster larvae levels to create more oyster reefs in places most affected by erosion, storm surges and more.

"There are lots of areas along the Georgia coast that are being impacted negatively by sea level rise and climate change in general, so it is just a matter of identifying a good starting point," Provost assured.

Once these sites are identified, volunteers will bag the shells and put them into the water where they will act as wave breaks, flood mitigation barriers and areas for oyster larvae to attach onto.

"In turn, it will build up oyster reefs, living shorelines, keep the soil where it needs to be, clean the water and generally make Georgia's coasts much healthier," Provost said.

As Shell to Shore continues to make waves in coastal conservation, their initiative is prompting a fresh perspective on the life cycle of an oyster. The journey of an oyster shell doesn't have to end at the dinner table, but could begin a new journey in preserving our coastlines.


Isabelle Atkins wrote this article for Grady Newsource.


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