The South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR) recycled over 38,000 bushels of oyster shells from area restaurants and residents’ private oyster roasts just last year. But that represents only about 10% of the shells that get harvested in the Lowcountry, while the rest often go to waste, according to environmental groups.
The SCDNR’s Oyster Recycling and Enhancement Program (SCORE) spearheads community-based rehabilitation efforts to restore oyster reefs and living shorelines with replanted oyster shells and manufactured reefs. And with oyster-roast season upon us, this is the program’s busiest time of year.
“We are boots on the ground, recycling shells from anywhere and everywhere,” said program coordinator Holly Sommers. “It’s kind of incredible, especially this time of year.”
Oysters have a really simple life cycle, Sommers explained. They are broadcast spotters — larvae build on free-floating shells for the first few weeks of life. Then, as larvae get heavier, they seek more shells to land on. Replanting recycled shells give new oysters more places to settle and grow, preserving living shorelines and oyster reefs.
“Once people learn that the life cycle of an oyster relies on that existing shell, it gets their brain ticking,” Sommers said.
Why recycle?
Oysters do more for the Lowcountry than line downtown’s raw bars. An adult oyster filters up to 2.5 gallons of water per hour, improving water quality. Oyster reefs provide habitat for fish, crabs and other native species. And living shorelines are natural breakwaters that protect the Lowcountry’s salt marshes from erosion.
“As the city grows, the oyster populations grow ever more important,” said Rachel Hawes, coastal stewardship and engagement manager for the Coastal Conservation League. “If it’s not recycled, it’s often just thrown away and landfilled. And since only about 10% of the oysters we harvest are actually recycled, we have a massive gap to close.”
Often, environmentally minded people try to recycle the shell themselves, but doing so can do more harm than good, she said.
“A lot of people think they know how it works and think they’re helping, but oyster shells can carry diseases that spread in the waterways if they aren’t recycled properly,” she said. “The DNR quarantines the recycled shell to ensure it doesn’t carry those diseases, and it eventually makes its way back into the water with help from biologists.”
Sommers said it’s important to recognize that the recycled shells go back to harvestable reefs
“We are not creating private reefs for people to harvest on — we are here to make sure these populations are healthy enough for the public to enjoy for years to come,” she said. “It’s very thankless work — oysters are stinky — but we’re not garbage men, we’re recycling entire habitats.”
How to get involved
The DNR boasts several volunteer opportunities throughout the year, especially during the busy winter seasons, to ensure that people who want to do their part for living shorelines can do so properly.
“We need volunteers to help us recycle shell from locations that we can’t get to,” Sommers said. “We have people that help us serve Kiawah, Greenville and Beaufort and more.”
Volunteers help pick up oyster shells from local restaurants, collect shells from public drop-off sites and more.
Sommers said program leaders browse social media for oyster roast events and reach out to the hosts to provide recycling bins for the discarded shells. But, she said, they prefer that people take the shells to any of the 11 public drop-off bins around the Lowcountry.
“Anywhere oysters are being consumed, there’s a responsibility that they’re also being recycled,” Sommers said. “We’re trying to coin the phrase, ‘roast responsibly,’ and that really means being knowledgeable of where your public drop-off bins are and having a plan in place for your shells.”
The Coastal Conservation League also discourages people who want to use discarded oyster shells for landscaping and art projects.
“We really want that shell to be recycled and for folks to find other alternative materials for those projects,” Hawes said.
Sommers agreed, adding that it’s imperative people know not to take shells out of the DNR’s recycling bins.
“I have people calling me all the time trying to use the shells for landscaping or art projects,” she said. “But once it’s in the receptacle, it is property of the state. It’s illegal to take shell from these receptacles.”
Visit saltwaterfishing.sc.gov/oyster.html for an interactive map of oyster shell drop-off sites, or for volunteer opportunities, visit score.dnr.sc.gov.
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