Solar Powered Reef Keeping Oysters in East Coast Waters
by Jaymi Heimbuch, San Francisco, California on 10.14.08
Photo via beccaxsos
Oysters are disappearing from New York City’s waterways due to pollution, overharvesting and disease. But creative thinker James Cervino has come up with an interesting way to get them to return home and thrive.
He’s created a solar-powered electric oyster reef - a set of spiral-shaped metal bands that use the sun to charge up and create a chemical reaction in the water that seems to make oysters quite happy to call the reef home.
The metal spirals have solar panels attached to the top which helps generate an electric current. The current causes a chemical reaction in the sea water which causes limestone to build up on the metal. The mineral-rich build is enjoyed by the oysters and helps them to live happily on the metal bars.
Cervino's collaborator, Thomas Goreau, president of the Global Coral Reef Alliance, has shown that electrification can help damaged coral reefs regenerate. It seems to be helping the oysters here as well, he says. Oysters in mesh sacks at the spirals' base are alive while control oysters - those farther from the electric field - have all died.
A return of the oysters would help clean up the waterways, since oysters are excellent water filterers.
This project is part of a larger movement along the East Coast and elsewhere to restore ecosystems drastically altered by human activity. Restoration almost invariably begins with so-called keystone species, the humble filter feeders once so numerous along the eastern seaboard that they cleaned entire bays within days. Their importance as a species stems from their ability to filter large amounts of water. Depending on its size, an oyster filters between 5 and 50 gallons of water daily. Water now murky with algae and other organic matter was, in earlier times, almost certainly clear.
With the limestone providing minerals to form their shells, the oysters have a much better chance of rebuilding reefs and eventually using the shells of previsous generations of oysters as food.
This is a very cool way to use solar power to revive a species and regenerate an ecosystem.
Via ABC News
More on Oysters:
Increasingly Acidified Waters Could Prompt Mass Shellfish Dissolution
More on Caring for Ecosystems:
Coastal Habitats Deemed Planet's Most Imperiled Ecosystems
Responding to Ecosystem Degradation
Ecosystems Have Rights Too
Thirsty for more? Check out these related articles:
- How to Find Green Energy Anywhere
- Is Toyota Hot on the Trail of a Solar Powered Car?
- Toyota to Go Bold In Bid to Revive Flagging Sales
- Ota City: Solar Capital Of The World?
Ashden Awards 2009: Call For International Entries
|
Isabella Rossellini to Make New Green Porno Films on the Sex Life of Marine Animals
|
Electric polarities, positive and negative, pull low and high pH water. Can't remember which does which, though. So the electrification that helps oysters is probably doing that, attracting a better pH water close them, allowing them to survive.
Have we done this with the chesapeake bay oysters yet?
I know that some restoration projects have occured, but I am not sure if htis onehas been tried...
This is awesome... Cleaning water while making delicious oysters... Awesome... :) lol
I wonder if these oysters would be delicious or even edible, after all, the stuff they filter from the water I don't know if it remains as is in their bodies or they get decomposed to something safe to eat.