Oyster Box

The Problem

There is a lack of public knowledge surrounding oyster reef ecosystem services in water quality and living shoreline stabilization.

Our Proposal

Our project helps educate, empower, and enlighten schoolchildren and their families about the benefits of oysters and marine ecology more broadly. Specifically, we create an ‘oyster box’ that can be purchased so an individual can build and maintain their own oyster reef. The kit includes: Oyster spat, CaCO3 concrete mixture, Instruction Booklet, Burlap/net, pH test, Decorations, Oyster spat, Journal. Kids can keep a journal of their colony and how it's doing, as well as build their own reef habitat. On our app and online community, children also get to name their colony, put a pin drop where their colony is, and upload photos of how their individual colonies are doing. This citizen science platform will also potentially help with existing modeling of ideal oyster habitats through Duke labs.

We Assume that...

Possible zoning issues - look for public and private partnerships, and contact state government and local parks

Scalability - integrate in school curriculums, and use a 'buy one, sponsor one' model to reach economically disadvantaged youth

Get in touch with local areas - make sure where it is being placed is usable for all people

Shipping - technicalities of how to safely transport spat (baby oysters)

Substrate - calcium carbonate concrete helps counter the negative effects of ocean acidification, but this is still a potential concern for any oyster farm

Constraints to Overcome

Awareness and scalability are our main constraints - we believe that partnerships with local parks, the Gullah/Geechee Nation and other coastal communities our team members have worked with in the past, and existing local initiatives like the Billion Oyster Project can take our project to the next level. We believe that our project is highly feasible, since we are recombining existing technologies rather than using any technology that doesn’t exist, fostering partnerships with local companies and governments, involving a broad range of members of the community (especially through our online platform), playing to existing notions of stewardship, and following a prior business model based on TOMS, backyard beehives, and mushroom farms - people will pay to feel like they are helping the ecosystem if they also get something back.

Current Work

Building local and national partnerships, managing initial shipments, and materials sourcing

Current Needs

Initial seed funding would be helpful for the first round of Oyster Boxes; given the enormous economic benefits of oysters, both in regard to ecosystem services and commercially, we see restoration efforts as highly valuable. Since oysters fully mature in roughly three years and provide ecosystem benefits before that, we see our project as producing deliverables on a reasonably rapid timescale. Short term benefits: (0-3 years) Involvement in the social community Filtering water where planted (50 gallons per oyster per day) Protection from storm surge Juvenile Fish/Invertebrates/shellfish habitat Long term benefits: (3+ years) Mature market for food Carbon sequestration Full reef/storm barrier Juvenile Fish/Invertebrates/shellfish