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California's dramatic Pacific coastline is arguably the state's most valuable asset, but erosion and rising sea levels are causing that coastline to crumble ever more rapidly into the ocean. One effort to slow down that process starts with dinner scraps. Jill Replogle from member station LAist has this story.
(SOUNDBITE OF SEAGULL SCREECHING)
JILL REPLOGLE, BYLINE: At the Bluewater Grill in Newport Beach, a worker lugs a large plastic storage bin out of the kitchen and into the back of Kaysha Kenney's minivan. We take a peek inside the bin. It's full of oyster shells. This pickup is the first phase of a project led by Kenney's group Orange County Coastkeeper. The goal is to use the shells to restore the once abundant oyster beds along the coast and, by doing that, protect the shoreline from erosion and rising seas. They've been doing it since 2024.
KAYSHA KENNEY: You can see there's, like, a little bit of food scraps in here, which is fine because they sit out in a field, and they have little animals that will come and, like, kind of pick off the food scraps.
(SOUNDBITE OF SHELLS RATTLING)
REPLOGLE: We head inland to a hot, sunny patch of land. Here, Kenney weighs each restaurant's contribution and spreads the shells out to cure in the sun, to rid them of pathogens and any leftover horseradish and tabasco sauce. Once cured, the shells will go to someone like Craig Shoffner (ph).
CRAIG SHOFFNER: Let's go over here.
REPLOGLE: Shoffner is one of about 80 residents in Huntington Harbor, just up the coast, who's become a kind of oyster nanny. Some of those discarded restaurant shells will hopefully attract oyster larvae floating through the water.
SHOFFNER: So, yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF WATER DRIPPING)
REPLOGLE: Shoffner pulls up a wire strung with about a dozen oyster shells, and points out a small, dark circle on the inside of one of them.
SHOFFNER: So you can see, like, right there, there's a spot. There might have been an oyster there at one time, but maybe a predator came and ate it or something like that.
REPLOGLE: His shell strings don't seem to be particularly attractive to any baby oysters this year, but that's OK, he says.
SHOFFNER: Part of the project is to figure out where we can harvest oysters. So I'm contributing to the data, right?
REPLOGLE: Shoffner's oysters, if he gets any, are not for eating. They're going to be put to work. See, oysters do a lot to keep the marine environment and the shoreline healthy. When oyster larvae settle on shells, they start to secrete their own shells, effectively gluing the shells together to form oyster beds. If you transplant them to areas vulnerable to erosion, it can help prevent the coastline from washing out to sea. Danielle Zacherl is a biology professor at California State University Fullerton.
DANIELLE ZACHERL: They also encourage sedimentation by generating eddies. The shells, like, popping up into the water column slow the water velocity and allow sediment to filter down. That's really important for coastal habitats right now, especially in the face of climate change.
REPLOGLE: And oysters remove excess nutrients from the water that cause harmful algal blooms. In fact, a single adult oyster can filter up to 50 gallons a day. They also improve water quality for eelgrass, which sequesters carbon, provides habitat for ocean critters and also helps prevent erosion.
Zacherl and the organization Coastkeeper plan to use the shells hanging off Shoffner and his neighbors' docks, seeded with baby oysters, to create what are called living shorelines in several places along the Southern California coast. They only harvested 10 last year, but they have a lot more people participating this year. And even the shells without oysters will attract baby oysters in the wild once transplanted and create habitat that helps stabilize the shoreline.
ZACHERL: Think about this natural product that's getting sent to landfills that really could be doing so much more good.
REPLOGLE: Living shorelines are becoming popular across the country. They're seen as more cost-efficient and ecologically friendly compared to what's known as hard armoring - think seawalls and riprap. Shoffner and his fellow oyster nannies will soon have to give up their slimy charges. It's hard for some of them to let go but just a little bit easier knowing those oysters will be helping clean the water and reestablish a resilient California coast. For NPR News, I'm Jill Replogle in Orange County.
(SOUNDBITE OF ANDERSON .PAAK SONG, "TWILIGHT") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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