The World is Your Oyster: How Oysters Effectively Impact Water Pollution
Our group members Alanna Kroening, Flavia Shyti, Brie Underwood and Valerie Kominer teamed up with the Billion Oyster Project to explore viable solutions to New York City’s water pollution. The Billion Oyster Project has successfully cultivated oysters in the New York Harbor as a method of filtering the polluted water. Oysters are natural filter feeders and create an ecosystem for other animals in the Harbor. Our group wanted to see whether oysters could be introduced to our local marina, the Paerdegat Basin, in order to clear the chemical pollutants in the same way oysters were able to clear it in New York Harbor. We set up two research tanks, one with regular saltwater and another with water from the marina, and grew oysters in the tanks. We measured the water quality of each tank for a few weeks, and the growth of the oysters in each tank. Our findings showed that oysters would be a successful and healthy addition to the Paerdegat Basin!
Click here to view the PDF of our poster.
You can follow us on Instagram to see fun updates @theworldisyour.oyster – https://www.instagram.com/theworldisyour.oyster/
And check out our blog! – https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/theworldisyouroyster/
Hey Guys!! I LOVED your project – from the topic itself to the execution, it was spotless (the blog-post was so creative!). I think it is so cool that you managed to conduct an actual science experiment and derive your own results in the midst of a pandemic, while the rest of us generally had to rely on pre-existing data and research. Fabulous!!
Thank you so much!! It was really a blast, and we’re so grateful for the Billion Oyster Project for all their help and guidance!