Aw shucks, you just had a wonderful meal, tipping your head back to usher a soft and succulent oyster down your throat—and now you’re left with a plate full of shells. What can be done with them? Fabulously, these shells can be recycled with the "Save Your Shucks" program based in California via the Wild Oyster Project.
Oyster reefs need to be rebuilt; they are currently at a shocking 1 percent of historic levels. In the San Francisco Bay Area, baby oysters free swim in the bay but require oyster shells to settle on and grow. They seek out shells, and over time, oyster reefs, a collection of living and dead shells, form to protect the community. The Wild Oyster Project returns those native Olympia shells to the bay to help restore the delicate balance needed to help oysters thrive. It’s a cool sustainability measure; in the project’s words, “Let’s eat oysters to save the oysters!"
I first learned about the project at the Salt Wood Kitchen & Oysterette in Marina, California. The associated hotel on the property, Sanctuary Beach Resort, participates in the Wild Oyster Project and also does small-scale recycling of the shells by setting up guests to do découpage projects on discarded and cleaned shells.
So, how does it work? Restaurants all over the Bay Area keep a marked 5-gallon plastic bucket on hand to gather the shells, and project volunteers come by to collect them weekly or bi-monthly. Restaurants are limited to ten buckets a month. The shells then go to a shell-curing site to be cleaned of any invasive species and bacteria… and then they’re returned to the water via oyster restoration projects.
A well-known restaurant that participates in this project is Lazy Bear, a restaurant in San Francisco carrying two Michelin stars. Almond and Oak in Oakland, across the bay, is another participant, as is San Francisco cocktail bar Petite Lil’s. The Salty Pearl seafood restaurant in Oakland also takes part—and it should, since it’s in Jack London Square, named for the famous author who was a teenage oyster pirate, sailing out under the cover of darkness to illegally harvest oysters and sell them to restaurants. According to this source, he earned the nickname, “The Prince of the Oyster Pirates.” Who knew?