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The Watershed Project

oyster restoration

Why and How to Make an Oyster Film | An Interview with Emily Driscoll

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In preparation for our exciting, upcoming movie event, Executive Director Linda Hunter chatted with Emily V. Driscoll, the director of Shellshocked: Saving Oysters to Save Ourselves. Shellshocked is a riveting documentary detailing the demise of oyster reefs in New York harbor, and the current movement to revive their decreased populations.

What inspired you to make the movie, Shellshocked?

Sludge, toxic waste and living oysters is what I remember reading. It didn’t seem possible or right. It was 2007 and I was reading about Katie Mosher Smith’s efforts to put living oysters into Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal–a toxic superfund site that was once an oyster paradise with bivalves the size of babies! Oysters filter water and create habitat for up to 300 species. The hope was to raise awareness about oyster restoration and make some improvement in the water quality. The oysters in the Gowanus weren’t making a huge difference, but they were surviving (barely). This project and other New York oyster restoration projects began as grassroots organizations and volunteers and steadily grew.

A couple of years later the movement had the backing of 28 organizations like the Hudson River Foundation and The Harbor School. Individuals continued restoring oysters to the Harbor, using their own expertise. Artist Mara Haseltine created living sculptures that doubled as oyster habitat and sparked discussion about the bivalves and cleaning up our waters. After learning of the collaboration and efforts, I wanted to make a film to show how scientists, government officials, environmentalists, artists and high school students were working together and using their own resources and ingenuity to bring back oysters to help restore New York Harbor.

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How did you gain access to the amazing historical photos featured in the film?

Before I delved too deep into the oyster restoration research, I needed to understand the history of New York oysters. Mark Kurlansky’s The Big Oyster was a wealth of information and I dug through boxes of photos at The NY Public Library and NY Historical Society. I contacted historical societies up and down the East Coast and scoured the Library of Congress and Museum of the City of New York archives. The images captured the oysters’ role in New York’s history, economy, ecology and culture at the time. Oysters were sold on street corners, the way hot dogs are today. Crushed oyster shells were used in building. Within a few decades, they were gone–pollution, overfishing, dredging and diseases had wiped out this species, which was synonymous with New York. They were quickly forgotten and New Yorkers’ connection with the Harbor virtually disappeared as the water became more toxic. Bluegrass band Bob Wright and Harbortown helped me tell the story of New York oysters with their songs about the old New York oyster industry and its demise.

How is the film contributing to the growing community of people interested in native oyster restoration?

After finishing the film I decided to distribute the film myself–a “grassroots distribution”–and set up screenings that could spark discussions about oyster restoration where the screenings were taking place. The screenings often include sustainably farmed local oysters and a Q&A with environmentalists, farmers and scientists who are working to bring back oysters. Since 2012, ShellShocked has been shown in restaurants, museums, theaters, aquariums, libraries and universities in the US, Canada, Europe, Asia and Australia. I had no idea there were so many oyster restoration projects when I began making the film! It’s been wonderful to learn about the wealth of projects and find so many people working–often as volunteers–to bring back the beloved bivalve. I’m thrilled the film can help bring together like- minded people to discuss the health of our estuaries, oceans and planet. That is why I wanted to make it!

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Can oyster reefs play a role in mitigating the effects of climate change, such as the devastating tide surge in Lower Manhattan during Hurricane Sandy?

Now oyster reefs are being considered as a “soft infrastructure” option to act as a buffer against storm surges, like the one that occurred in superstorm Sandy. Oysters reefs won’t block a 14-foot storm surge, but they can diminish wave energy. Oyster restoration on a large scale is needed to build up oysters to a critical mass where they can reproduce and build reefs on their own, meanwhile protecting our shorelines.

Can you share a story that didn’t make it to the final cut but that is still a compelling piece for you personally?

If I had more time in the film, I would have included information about oysters and archaeology–learning that some oyster middens (heap of shells) are tens of thousands of years old and reveal information about cultures living at that time.

Join us for a viewing of the film next Thursday at the Bridge ArtSpace in Richmond. We’ll serve oysters, beer, and popcorn!
Click here for more details and to purchase tickets.

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Are the Salmon Knocking? | An Appeal for Enhanced Oyster Monitoring


We know you care about San Francisco Bay, so we’re asking for your support of our efforts to restore the Bay’s subtidal and intertidal habitats. We need your help in our efforts to determine if we are bringing back native oysters in a sustainable way. Are we increasing species diversity? Are we helping salmon and other species?

To answer such important questions, our partner-scientists from the San Francisco Native Oyster Working Group helped us design a community-based monitoring program. It requires training volunteers and the use of sophisticated technology and scientifically reliable processes to assess the success of our oyster reefs at Pt. Pinole.

Even with the help of dedicated volunteers, oyster restoration–including monitoring–is expensive. The costs of equipment and volunteer supervision adds up to a hefty price tag. We’ve already received support from The Nature Conservancy, NOAA, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Contra Costa County Fish and Wildlife Committee. But in these economic times, they haven’t been able to fund us to a level that covers all the costs. That’s why we need your help in raising an additional $10,000. To explain why it’s crucial (and how we can tell if the salmon are knocking at our door) let’s start from the beginning…


Just 200 years ago, the San Francisco Bay Estuary was fantastically rich in natural resources. It was undisturbed, unpolluted, and teeming with wildlife. Beneath the surface of the Bay, 100,000 acres of filter-feeding native oyster beds cleaned the entire volume of water in the Bay in just a few days while providing physical structures as habitat for many forms of life. At the same time, untold acres of eelgrass meadows provided habitat for myriad other underwater species. Together, these two keystone species were the heart of a Bay food web that–among other things–sustained abundant populations of fish, including salmon.

Sadly, with the arrival of Europeans, human activity greatly degraded the Estuary. Today, native oysters cover less than 10 acres of the Bay’s floor, and our salmon fishery hangs on by a quickly unraveling thread.

During their annual migration through the Bay, from freshwater to the ocean, salmon (now called smolt) need to eat and grow enough to face the rigors of life in the ocean. Unfortunately, the Bay’s subtidal is so degraded that ocean-bound smolt leave the Bay in worse condition than when they entered it. To be sure, restoring salmon requires changes outside the Bay–such as limits on ocean fishing and upstream freshwater habitat restoration–but restoring habitat in the Bay is also crucial.


Helping salmon is a key reason for our work in the subtidal. But how can we tell if we’re helping them? Here, technology provides an answer. First, key fish species (salmon, sturgeon, and striped bass) are tagged–upstream–with tiny transmitters. Each tag has a unique ID and each fish/tag pair is entered into a database. Tagged fish are detected when they get close to any node in a network of submerged receivers located throughout the Estuary. With your help in procuring our own receivers, we’ll know if the salmon are knocking!

Our monitoring plan calls for five receivers: one at each of our four reefball plots and one at a reference location that’s not close to any of our oyster reefs. When a tagged fish gets within range, our receivers will log about two transmissions/second. After we retrieve the receiver from the Bay and download its data, we can tell how many fish came to our reef, how long they spent there, and how often they came back. By comparing the data from our reef receivers with the data from the reference site, we’ll know if the salmon are spending time at our reefs, presumably finding food and shelter from predators.

Please consider investing in the long term health and vitality of the Bay–one of our most important and prized natural resources. Your help is an important contribution to improving the science and process of bay restoration efforts.

Thank you for helping us restore oysters in the Bay. You’ll be helping open the door for the salmon!

Photos of the volunteer oyster monitoring program by: Mary O’Brien (top) and Chris Lim (middle and bottom).

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Hundreds of Hands Help Oysters | Living Shoreline Program Makes an Impact

By Christopher Lim

The San Francisco Bay’s native Olympia Oyster is taking small steps toward a restored future in our estuary. The Watershed Project’s Living Shoreline Initiative is helping promote that future by building relationships in the community, with volunteers, students, and teachers.

Native oysters already reside in the Bay, but in low numbers due to a lack of suitable habitat for baby oysters, called “spats.” Spats must attach to hard surfaces along the shoreline, something that is currently in short supply. To protect these important creatures from disappearing from the Bay entirely, The Watershed Project, the San Francisco Bay Native Oyster Working Group and the Marin Rod and Gun Club joined forces to build and monitor habitat for native oysters.

Through this unique partnership and the determination of many volunteers, there are currently two oyster reefs in the Bay, one at the Marin Rod and Gun Club and the other in the Berkeley Marina. Now, The Watershed Project is making plans to build another reef at Pt. Pinole Regional Shoreline. This reef will make history as the first ever community-constructed oyster reef in the San Francisco Bay.

Oyster monitoring, which includes measuring and counting spats, occurs twice a year– in the late summer and early fall. The Watershed Project has engaged enthusiastic community volunteers to support the monitoring program with their energy, devotion, and curiosity. During our most recent sampling and monitoring cycle, over 30 volunteers contributed 120 hours of their time to call out their spat measurements in millimeters, “4 … 11 … 8.”

This past fall, The Watershed Project’s education team has been worked to roll out our revamped Oysters on the Half Shell educational program. We are forming partnerships with local high schools to establish a set of recurring classroom visits. The program teaches a cohesive curriculum that incorporates the big picture, such as ocean currents and upwelling, as well as the tiny details, such as the benefits of oysters being filter feeders. To provide the students with a tangible outdoor experience, we take the students on two field trips to active oyster restoration sites. Still relatively new, this program will reach over 150 Bay Area high school students this school year.

Our students will visit and take an active role in building our oyster reef at Pt. Pinole. With the help of our burgeoning oyster community, we look forward to connecting Bay Area students and residents to the underwater dance of life along our precious shorelines.

Photos (from top to bottom): Students coming face to face with oysters at one of our partner sites, Pickleweed Point Community Shellfish Farm; Volunteers monitoring oyster bags at Marin Rod and Gun Club; Measuring and counting spats at one of The Watershed Project’s native oyster counting parties.

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