Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/1050416
NORTHSHOREMAG.COM 92 NOVEMBER 2018 PHOTOGRAPH BY SCOTT GOODWIN Massachusetts Oyster Project helps restore native oyster populations. By Alexandra Pecci OYSTER EDUCATION Lauren Puishys works with the Massachusetts Oyster Project tending to baby oysters. Right, Sarah Valencik (left) is a Gloucester resident and volunteer with the organization; Jennifer Cullen (right) is the president of the Massachusetts Oyster Project. Lauren Puishys spent the summer after she finished grad school babysitting, but she wasn't caring for humans. Instead, she was working with the Massachusetts Oyster Project tending baby oysters, known as spat, which were growing inside a tank called an upweller on the pier at Maritime Gloucester. In addition to stirring the spat to help filter out the oysters' waste and culling the oysters— organizing them by size—Puishys also spent a lot of time educating the public about oysters and the work she was doing there. "A lot of people didn't really know what oysters were," Puishys says. "ey knew that they could eat them; they just didn't know that they were good for the environment as well." On the North Shore, oysters are ubiquitous on restaurant menus. But in the wild, it's a different story. Wild eastern oyster popula- tions are currently much lower than histori- cally recorded populations in the state. And that's too bad, considering that oysters aren't just a delicious delicacy for humans. Not only do they naturally improve water quality—a single oyster filters up to 50 gallons of water per day—but they also form reefs, which do everything from stabilizing and / I N - D E P T H /