If you slurp oysters from the half-shell in New Orleans, you may be doing more than satisfying a culinary craving: You could be helping to construct reefs that environmental groups hope will save a bit of Louisiana’s coastline.
As The Associated Press reports, since 2014 restaurants have contributed nearly 2,600 tons of shells to the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana and The Nature Conservancy, which have already used a quarter of them to construct a half-mile-long reef about 40 miles outside of New Orleans.
The new reef off Louisiana’s coast, completed in November, consists of about 650 tons of shells, bagged and then placed into steel-mesh boxes known as gabion baskets measuring 6 feet long, 3 feet wide and 3 feet high.
The baskets, each of which holds 2 tons of shells, are laid end-to-end about 20 feet from shore, with gaps to match inlets in the marsh along the shore of Lake Athanasio—really a Gulf Coast bay on the ragged edge of St. Bernard Parish.
New Orleans’ shell-collection program has grown much faster than those in other states, thanks to a $1 million grant that covered its first three years and let the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana and The Nature Conservancy haul away shells without charging restaurants.
But now that the grant has expired, restaurants are being asked to pay about half the cost: $150 per 32-gallon collection bin. Consequently, more than half of the 26 participating restaurants have dropped out—including one that provided 484 tons of shells. That restaurant might have had to pay as much as $3,000 a month to stay in the program.
Bourbon House General Manager Steven Schnell estimates the recycling program will cost the restaurant about $900 a month going forward. Schnell says the restaurant has provided about 334 tons of shells so far.
“It takes about 700 tons to build one of these reefs,” he said. “So we’re really proud of the fact that half a reef is coming directly from this restaurant.”
