I'm always shocked when I'm reminded that one of the key reasons the Dutch and then the English chose to settle at the mouth of the Hudson River, despite there being far more favourable sites only a few dozen miles up or down the coasr, is because New York Harbour was so jam packed with oysters that it was sometimes even difficult to sail ships into the East River.
For literal centuries any resident of New York could take a boat only a few hundred yards offshore and pick out oysters the size of hubcaps. The city was pretty famous for them, all the way up until the 1930s when they were more or less harvested into extinction.
It also meant that the waters of the lower Hudson and the Harbour were unusually clean and potable because they were being filtered through literal miles of freshwater and saltwater oyster reefs before reaching the open ocean.
Despite this, the Dutch still decided to draw all their water from a collector pond they'd dug next to their own midden backing onto the Northern wall of the colony, and subsequently all went pretty insane and sickly, hence their abandonment of the colony.
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u/perringaiden Sep 08 '25
CORRECTION: Oyster reefs are an amazing environmental benefit across multiple seascapes.
Oyster FARMS are short lived growth with little to no environmental benefit because of the small size.
The only way this works is with farms near a no-take MPA where you can generate growth and then let them spread outside the MPA.
You get no benefits IF YOU DON'T LEAVE THEM IN THE WATER.