TRENTON — The nonprofit NY/NJ Baykeeper will again be allowed to conduct oyster research in a heavily contaminated part of the Hudson-Raritan Estuary, this time under the watch of the U.S. Navy. Under a permit approved today, the Baykeeper can access water at the Naval Weapons Station Earle’s pier in Leonardo, Monmouth County, the state Department of Environmental Protection...
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The NY/NJ Baykeeper will be allowed to continue oyster research under U.S. Navy supervision. TRENTON — The nonprofit NY/NJ Baykeeper will again be allowed to conduct oyster research in a heavily contaminated part of the Hudson-Raritan Estuary, this time under the watch of the U.S. Navy.
Under a permit approved today, the Baykeeper can access water at the Naval Weapons Station Earle’s pier in Leonardo, Monmouth County, the state Department of Environmental Protection said in a news release.
The plan was negotiated after DEP forced the environmental group to remove its estimated four dozen experimental oyster beds from the Navesink River in Red Bank and Raritan Bay in Keyport last year because the department could not patrol them.
Without oversight, state officials and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration feared the oysters — raised for research in polluted water and not safe to eat — could be harvested by poachers and sold to the public, potentially making people sick.
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View full size"It is great to have oysters back in the water in the Raritan Bay," said Debbie Mans, executive director of the group. "Baykeeper’s long-term priority has always been the restoration of the Hudson-Raritan Estuary and we will continue to pursue this goal for the benefit of the millions of people that call this water body their backyard."
Mans said her group will hang cages of small oysters from the pier next month to see how well they survive in the water. If they do well, the group will consider a much larger-scale experiment similar to the one it was forced to trash last year. All of the roughly 50,000 oysters raised as part of that project died, Mans said.
The oysters had been planted on an artificial reef designed to re-establish the native mollusks to contaminated coastal waters. The oysters were wiped out by pollution and two diseases that swept the coast between the 1950s and 1980s. The oysters act as efficient filters, potentially helping clean the region’s waters at almost no cost.
Previous coverage:
• Video: State orders environmental group to remove experimental oyster project in Raritan Bay
