Busy Weekend Supporting Oyster Restoration
On Saturday MOP was active at the Boston Seafood Festival working with Pangea shellfish to recycle about 75 gallons of oyster shell. This will be moved to our East Boston aging facility. Shown below is volunteer Jake Levy a student at Saint Sebastian's who helped move the shell.
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| Jake puts out one of the buckets to accept shell for recycling. |
The event was held to support the Boston Fisheries Foundation an organization has several objectives to supporting the Boston Seafood industry.
- Support and expand sustainable fisheries, which in turn sustain the New England economy;
- Educate the media and the public about the role played by fishermen
in preserving our wild ocean stocks through responsible harvesting and
management;
- Educate the media and the public about the benefits of sustainably
harvested seafood as high-quality nutrition whose production protects
the environment from deforestation, global warming, and other negative
impacts;
- Facilitate public awareness of our history and the importance of
wild harvests to the proud traditions of an independent New England;
and,
- Develop a Maritime Fisheries Museum to honor our heritage.
We also addressed the large crowd there to watch the shucking competition. Which was something to behold. Working with knives the competitors hands flew like those of famous drummer Buddy Rich as they rapidly opened the bivalves.
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| Amazing oyster shucking competition at the Boston Seafood Festival |
Our brief talk mentioned a few points.
1. Oyster reefs area n important estuarine habitat.
2. 75% of the commercial seafood catch comes directly from or passes a portion of its lifecycle through estuaries.
3. 100 other species will live in an oyster reef.
4. By supporting oyster restoration, we are creating habitat and supporting the global seafood industry.
We also helped out shucking oysters at the Pangea booth.
On Sunday we held our annual oyster/beer-tasting event at Plymouth's Mayflower Brewery and had a terrific turnout as we dined on oysters from Big Rock oyster company and enjoyed the fine assortment of craft beers.
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| Josh and Duxbury resident Bill Goodell moved the merchandise. |
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| Mayflower's Sarah Richardson did an awesome job on the taps. |
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| Imagination Island Staff model hats for the Massachusetts Oyster Project |
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The staff at Imagination Island provided an excellent environment for kids to play. We even picked up a a few Mom's and Dad's who came over from a birthday party.
We also saved an additional 20 gallons of oyster shell for recycling.
Next Weekend- Wellfleet Oyster Festival
We will have a booth at the Welllfleet Oyster Festival next weekend. Do stop by and introduce yourself, or pick up one of our new T-shirts that are sporting our new logo. We are migrating to a new logo.
Welcome New Mass Oyster Project Board member Aaron Hankowski
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| Aaron Hankowski Mass Oyster Project Board Member |
Aaron
Hankowski - Aaron resides in Boston's South End neighborhood. Aaron works for a
Boston based Marketing Strategy Consulting firm; helping business owners of
performance-driven companies create brands, products and experiences that their
customers love.
Interesting Presentation on Oyster Restoration in New York. (Massachusetts is so far behind.)
