NEW YORK—New York Harbor School, the city’s first maritime high school in over 15 years, is looking to take environmental stewardship past recycling and composting. By actively engaging its high school students in a large-scale oyster restoration project, the school hopes to not just clean up the waterways surrounding New York, but restore it to the bountiful ecosystem it once was.
“There used to be 260,000 acres of oysters in this estuary system,” New York Harbor School co-founder Murray Fisher said during a tour of the school on Tuesday.
New York’s waterways used to teem with fish and other marine life not seen today, with oyster beds being one of the largest navigational hazards.
“New Yorkers cannot even comprehend that was the ecosystem,” Fisher said.
Pollution killed off almost all of the oysters leaving the harbor with miles of flat mud underwater.
Fisher created the school with the hopes of incorporating the oyster into a long-term restoration program.
