Solar One took great strides this week to study and improve the quality of the East River at our Stuyvesant Cove location. Working with our partners at NY/NJ Baykeeper, we have re-initiated our oyster gardening site! The new oysters, which contain 38 juveniles and hundreds of infant oysters [known as spats], will be monitored by visiting school groups and Solar One staff. In addition to caring for the oysters, the above groups will work together to collect data to help decide how hospitable our East River location is for oyster restoration.
The gardening project has the goal of bringing back the oyster to the New York harbor estuary and allowing this keystone species to provide its number of benefits to our waters ways, including water quality improvement and habitat creation.
We are also very excited that our new automated water quality monitoring equipment has arrived. Once this system is in place, we will have real time data posted online. This will help us try to understand the relationship between our oysters’ health and the East River water quality!