Title:
Scientists Recycle Oyster Shells to Aid Chesapeake
Bay
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
See text below
Text:
Recycling programs usually give new life to
materials like paper, metal, plastic and glass. But
a program in the eastern United States is recycling
shellfish to help the Chesapeake Bay. Oysters are
filter feeders which means they help clean the
water. At the same time, generation upon generation
of oysters form reefs. These structures provide
homes for fish and crabs. Oysters are a Chesapeake
tradition. And they are good for the bay. But
environmental damage and too much harvesting have
cut the oyster population of the Chesapeake. An
organization called the Oyster Recovery Partnership
started the recycling program earlier this year.
Baby oysters need to attach themselves to a shell or
other hard surface as they grow. Scientists are
using recycled shells as part of an oyster
reproduction program. More than fifty restaurants,
seafood dealers and other businesses have joined the
Oyster Shell Recycling Alliance. Two states,
Maryland and Virginia, are also taking part in the
program. One of the restaurants involved is in
Washington, near the White House. Oysters are a
specialty at the Old Ebbitt Grill, and manager
Christian Guidi says that means lots of shells. He
says: "We serve between fifteen hundred and three
thousand oysters a day, and that obviously does
create a lot of waste." But the restaurant no longer
throws away all those shells. The Oyster Recovery
Partnership takes them away for recycling.First the
shells get washed. Then they go to the Center for
Environmental Science at the University of Maryland
for further processing. The shells are placed in
tanks with hundreds of millions of oyster larvae.
This way, the baby oysters can be raised until they
have grown big enough to be moved to the Chesapeake.
This year, the Oyster Recovery Partnership helped
produce and plant more than four hundred fifty
million baby oysters in the bay. Don Meritt heads
the oyster recovery program at the University of
Maryland. He says the goal is not just to increase
the oyster population. He says: "Our real goal here
is to try to restore healthy oysters to the
Chesapeake Bay so that we can help restore a healthy
Chesapeake Bay." Mr. Meritt says it will take many
years of work before the Chesapeake Bay has a good
supply of oysters again. For VOA Special English I'm
Alex Villarreal. You can find our programs with
transcripts and MP3s at voaspecialenglish.com.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
