Brendan Causgrove’s first encounter with an oyster did not go well. He choked on the plump specimen at the bottom of a hard-alcohol shot after knocking it back.
Now the manager of a smart New Orleans restaurant whose menu features 13 kinds of oysters, the 37-year-old describes them as if they were fine wine: “herbaceous,” “buttery” or “briny.”
As Reuters reports, his fervor also means Seaworthy is among 19 restaurants in New Orleans that have joined an oyster-shell recycling program aiming to help save the state’s shrinking shoreline.
Since 2014, Deborah Abibou and her small team at the non-profit Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana have recycled 7.8 million pounds of oyster shells, which they have returned to the water in the form of man-made reefs.
The aim is to stop Louisiana’s shoreline crumbling away. Early each weekday morning, a recycling truck zig zags through the city to pick up the mollusk shells from restaurants.
The shells are then left to dry in the sun for six months, to kill off any bacteria, before being put into cages that are planted on bare seafloors or riverbeds to form protective walls.
