re: BBC article... Can oysters save Louisiana’s wetlands?

When I was in LSU AgBusiness undergrad, there was a beginning push to put freshwater oysters in every public LA waterway to clean up the muddy waters to open up more opportunities for outdoor recreation.
I only paid attention during the class lesson about it & forgot about it until seeing this thread. I wonder if that ever got going...? (Too distracted rn to Google it)

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How much time and money is spent gathering up all those shells and putting them out? Probably much more than the cost to install rocks...

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This article seems like it's probably a little one sided, but they seem to say you're wrong, at least when you consider the other benefits that oysters provide.

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Against this backdrop, building oyster reefs to buffer Louisiana’s wetlands, instead of laying seawalls made of concrete or granite or (more likely still) of doing nothing, no longer seems like an unwieldy undertaking. Instead, as a solution, it seems elegant. Nature usually is.

The data has borne this out. One study determined that a hectare of oyster reef was worth up to $99,000 (£77,000) per year in terms of benefits like the habitat it provided for other fish and its effect on water quality – not including the value of those oysters being harvested. In terms of flood and storm protection alone, an oyster reef provides more value for money than even levees or dykes. In April 2018, a team of scientists published a cost-benefit analysis of projects being done across the Gulf, from building dykes to restoring barrier islands. Costs of construction and maintenance were weighed against the effectiveness of flood and storm protection – calculated using economic models developed by reinsurance company Swiss Re with its partners. (Read more about how the financial industry is developing tools to calculate the risk of climate change and what that could mean for climate resilience projects).

The findings were stark. Anything with a benefit-to-cost ratio above one is, of course, seen as cost-effective. In terms of reducing risk alone, dykes and levees had a benefit-to-cost ratio of 0.26; beach replenishment in the western Gulf, 0.28. Restoring oyster reefs (7.34) was calculated to be 28 times more beneficial. And restoring wetlands? Thirty-three times more (8.72). The only project with a higher benefit-to-cost ratio was sandbags – but only because of how cheap they were. In terms of overall risk reduction, the benefit was low.

As Abibou puts it: “We can’t just build levees and hide behind them. We need to have a healthy marsh and healthy wetlands to provide us with adequate risk reduction.”

Then there is the value of the fishing industry in general.

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johns river are also better than the ones here

should i leave LL at home?

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Chesapeake Bay are better and Im sure others are better.

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This

Even Mobile Bay Oysters are better.

I don’t think I’ve ever met an oyster I don’t like.

Erosion is constant, it always has been. At some point, everything currently on the surface of the will be gone below it, and eventually, everything below the surface will be recycled and morphed into some other concoction. Yes, there are things we can do to slow that process and slow the demise of ecosystems, I just think some people forget everything on Earth is temporary in its current form.

Dare i ask the ingredient? Salmon?

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I've had Chesapeake oysters, Puget Sound Oysters, and Gulf Oysters and the gulf ones are clearly the biggest and most flavorful. I will say, however, that I actually did like the Puget Sound ones as well as they have a unique earthy taste not found in the gulf ones. The Chesapeake ones were too bland and small.

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I don't find gulf oysters more flavorful than Puget Sound oysters or Pacific oysters in general but they are definitely bigger and still pretty damned good.

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Blue Points >>> LA oysters

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I've had both back to back. And I've served blue points to a Louisiana oysterman.

He was interested in the novelty, and disappointed in their flavor