It’s early morning and already hot out when I meet Erika Smith behind a restaurant dumpster in Wellfleet:
"So we are collecting shells, oyster shells from Mac’s Shack and getting them to the transfer station so they can cure and recycle and go them back in the water in Wellfleet," she said.
The shells are from last night’s dinner service — a stinky, heavy collection carefully collected and saved at every restaurant in town that serves oysters.
"So basically the restaurants, they all have these five-gallon buckets that they keep inside the restaurant," Erika explained. "And everyone’s a little different, sometimes we’re only getting the tops from the shuckers, sometimes we’re getting both, because the servers are dumping them as well, so basically they just put them outside for us when they’re full."
Then Erika and her team at the Wellfleet Oyster Alliance come pick up the buckets all over town, leaving clean ones behind and bringing the shells to an ever-growing pile at the Wellfleet transfer station. There, the shells are required by law to sit outside for a full year before they can be put back into the harbor.
"We're putting the shells back in the water for habitat as what's called cultch. And that's the hard substrate that the larvae look to attach to in order to grow. You know clams, for instance, they have a foot. And if they land in the sand, you know, they can move around. Oysters, if they land in the sand, they don't move. So if they’re this tiny little larvae or even a, you know, spat something small that gets put in the water, if they just land on the sediment, they're going to get covered and die."
Historically, many coastal harbors along the east coast were filled with oyster reefs — complex habitats built on clusters of old shell. But as we’ve taken more and more shellfish out of the water to eat, we’ve neglected to put the shells back in, and these reefs have been disappearing.
"As with anything, if you continue to take it out of the ecosystem and never put anything back, it's going to disappear," Erika said.
She added, "and if the shell totally disappears, then you're missing opportunities not only for the oyster growth to have a place to land, but there's other living species that are down there that use it and we did an experiment where we bagged the shell a couple years ago and put it in to see if it caught a better set of larvae. And what was so interesting to me was just the amount of critters that found home and it was a lot of eels actually and crabs of course and little shrimp. So it's just interesting to see what habitat you're creating out there."
This summer the shell recycling program is in its fourth year, and Erika says the amount of shell restaurants are saving has grown rapidly.
"You know as the seasons go, it's just become more routine in a lot of the restaurants, like Pearl, for instance, over the years, they've just increased and increased because their staff is just so familiar with it. From the back end shucking, getting just the tops to, you know having the servers and the clearers who are taking the shell. They know that it doesn't go in the trash, it goes in these buckets."
Year one the program was able to save 25,000 pounds of shell to put back in the harbor — and by last year, this was already up to 68,000. Erica says as other communities all over North America realize how valuable discarded shells can be, the practice is spreading.
"There are lots of programs very similar, there’s the billion oyster project in New York, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket both have their own shell recycling programs, in Chesapeake Bay they have a huge program, all the way down to Galveston, Texas."
There’s something satisfying about any kind of full circle management like this — and Erika says it's also fun to pick up the shells every week, add them to the pile, and know that she’s creating fresh oyster habitat, bucket by bucket.
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Here’s an interesting tidbit — after doing some research, Erika Smith has come to the conclusion that the Wellfleet Oyster Fest is likely the single biggest shell recycling event on the planet. Here's more info.
