Flat oysters growing in Botany Bay again after more than 100 years

April 6, 2024 8:19 AM

Flat oysters growing in Botany Bay after more than a century of local extinction. Australian flat oysters went extinct in Botany Bay during the late 1800s. A conservation project has been working to bring them back.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries (11 comments total)

Restoration work is often focused on the more charismatic large capstone species (whales, salmon, elephants, eagles), and there's value in that when the conservation of the charismatic species provides an umbrella to shelter all the less charismatic species.

But there are also species like oysters and beaver that are basically ecosystem engineers and do the work that in turn makes the ecosystem viable for the charismatic species. Restoring those species almost certainly provides the greatest bang-for-the-buck possible.
posted by Dip Flash at 9:23 AM on April 6 [4 favorites]

Botany Bay?? Botany Bay??? Oh, no! We've got to get out of here now. Damn!
posted by Servo5678 at 9:59 AM on April 6 [10 favorites]

"You didn't expect to find me. You thought this was Ceti Alpha Six!"
posted by the sobsister at 10:06 AM on April 6 [5 favorites]

Puts oyster in your helmet, puts it on your head
posted by phooky at 10:17 AM on April 6 [2 favorites]

Oysters are the best

If you build your seawall from reefs, the seawall will grow as sea rises
posted by eustatic at 12:45 PM on April 6 [4 favorites]

I thought oysters were carbon sinks but it turns out it's complicated.
posted by Mitheral at 2:03 PM on April 6

Came for the oysters, note the inevitable Star Trek joke. In another alternative universe Gene Roddenberry, instead of writing a series with a Captain Cook figure, chooses Captain Arthur Phillip instead and comes up with a gritty space prison drama about first contact.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 3:55 PM on April 6 [1 favorite]

If you build your seawall from reefs, the seawall will grow as sea rises
posted by eustatic at 3:45 PM on April 6 [+] [⚑]

Okay, I'll say it, eponysterical!
posted by mollweide at 4:16 PM on April 6 [4 favorites]

Great to hear of - nature can do so much when we work together. Up to a point oysters (and freshwater mussels) can remove a lot of sediment and (some) pollutants from aquatic systems.

I can't speak for Australian oysters but those of Chesapeake Bay (prior to 1870, before over-fishing, and then pollution took their toll) have been shown to have been turning over (filtering) the total bay volume every 3.3 days!, by 1988 cycle time was 325 days [.pdf, oyster-restoration.org]
posted by unearthed at 4:43 PM on April 6 [1 favorite]

Came here for the Star Trek 2 jokes, was not disappointed. I love you all you amazing nerds. *screams in Chekov*
posted by omegajuice at 7:23 PM on April 6 [1 favorite]

Am I a bad person for wondering how they taste?

I've been obsessed with the long-lost oysters of yore since I read...somewhere, perhaps in that oyster book that came out a few years ago... that oysters harvested from New York harbor used to be the size of dinner plates.

Makes sense that they would have been viewed as food for the poor or transient worker - my God, an oyster that you had to open with a spade and eat with a knife and fork?! I'd be lost in paradise. I can see myself sitting on top of the midden like a king.

I can't eat too many of the cursed things. I'm the blasted walrus from the Alice in Wonderland cartoon. I once performed a set at a blues fest where they had an oyster bar and I was given an "all-you-can-eat" wristband and the poor shuckers behind the counter had no policy in place... I ate near a hundred of the things before a fellow band-mate took hold of me.

Yes, yes, this will likely be the thing that kills me, I know. Wag your fingers. I become unharnessed, unmanageable. I understand why we ate all of the oysters. Dinner plates, like dinner plates....
posted by Baby_Balrog at 10:41 AM on April 7 [3 favorites]