A nonprofit organization wants to clean up and bring life back to the polluted New York Harbor. Called The Billion Oyster Project, the effort will rebuild the long-lost ecosystem by populating it with oysters and oyster reefs. 

The Billion Oyster Project has been ongoing since 2014 and so far, volunteers and partners have restored about 30 million oysters to the local waterways. Still, the group behind the effort said that it is only a fraction of the population that once thrived in the area. 

Nature's Best Water Purifiers

To accomplish their goal, the group has partnered with over 70 restaurants based in New York City. Instead of throwing them away, each restaurant contributes by saving up oyster shells. 

The New York Harbor School is also heavily involved in the effort. Students hatch and grow baby oysters, which are then attached to the collected and cleaned shells. 

The shells and the baby oysters are strategically placed in the New York coastline where they will clean the polluted water and bring life to the harbor. Oysters are known as natural purifiers; an adult oyster can cleanse 50 gallons of water per day. The reefs can also provide shelter for other marine animals. 

"Without the oyster reefs, the whole shoreline is fundamentally changed," stated Peter Malinowksi, the executive director of the nonprofit, in a conversation with CNN. "We think oyster reefs can be part of an integrated approach to resiliency and proactive planning for climate change."

The group is already seeing significant progress. According to Malinowski, last year, there was a dramatic increase of wild oysters that latched on to some of the reefs placed in the New York Harbor. 

The group hopes that by 2035, one billion live oysters will populate about 100 acres of reefs in the area, reclaiming its title as the oyster capital of the world. 

Environmental Impact

Aside from purifying the water, the oyster reefs are meant to protect New York City from storm surges and erosive waves. The large reefs will act as natural breakwaters across the coastline. 

However, for the oyster reefs to start acting as a barrier, it would need a couple of hundred more years to grow. The Billion Oyster Project is partnering with another nonprofit organization, Living Breakwater, to create artificial reefs around the shoreline of Staten Island to allow wild oysters to build their own reefs around the structure, making it large and strong enough to act as a barrier against storm surges.