Narrator: Louisiana's world-famous
wild oysters are getting harder and harder to come by.
In fact, almost all
of America's wild oyster populations have vanished.
And the ones that are left
face increasingly powerful storms,
as well as oil spills and disease.
Every single one of those things on that list,
a different one hits us every single year.
Narrator: The millions of tons of oysters
served up in restaurants every year are mostly farmed.
But oysters are not just for eating.
They're also essential for the environment.
They build reefs and filter water,
and losing them leaves places like Louisiana
worse off in the fight against erosion and pollution.
Scott: We need more oysters in the water,
whether they're on the bottom or in cages.
Period, they just do so much for the environment.
Narrator: Conservationists think
they can restore America's wild oyster reefs.
Seth: It's really not hard to imagine recovering oysters
as a habitat and a fishery
in the same place at the same time.
Narrator: So what's the true cost
of losing America's wild oysters?
And is it too late to bring them back?
Take a look at this picture
from the turn of the 20th century.
These people are standing on a mountain of oyster shells,
a regular sight in coastal American cities
about 130 years ago.
Between 1880 and 1910,
fishermen were harvesting 160 million pounds
of wild oyster meat per year.
That's more than every other country
in the world combined,
and nearly seven times what we farm today.
Scott: Everybody remembers the black-and-white pictures
of Louisiana oyster boats loaded down with oyster shell.
The reason they're all in black and white
is because it's been that long
since we've had that many oysters.
Narrator: Even the massive halls of the late 1990s
feel like a distant dream to fishermen like Scott Maurer.
Scott: There used to be 50-, 60-foot oyster boats
that would come in here every day.
And you don't see any of those anymore.
Narrator: Farming oysters today isn't easy.
Fresh water, salt water, spills.
It impacts the oysters, and it stresses them.
Narrator: Only about 10,000
of Scott's oysters survived the 2021 hurricane season.
Scott: I have had up to a million oysters on the farm.
We basically only have, like, two and a half
to three lines right here.
That's all that we have left for the market-size oysters.
Narrator: Scott's oysters aren't wild.
For that, they would need to reproduce naturally.
But the wild population just isn't large enough
to make that happen.
So Scott and other farmers
in Louisiana have to fertilize
and then seed their oysters artificially.
Most farmers in Louisiana don't raise oysters
in floating cages like Scott does.
They actually do that on the sea floor.
They seed and install limestone substrate
or use old oyster shells to start the reefs off.
But Scott can't get a lease to do that.
Louisiana issued a moratorium on new leases back in 2002,
after it got into a legal battle
with oyster farmers over coastal restoration work.
The state diverted fresh water upstream,
but it ended up disturbing reef growth,
because oysters are sensitive.
Too much fresh water,
or even too much salt water from a storm surge,
can lead to mass die-offs.
To top it off, oyster reefs were already in bad shape.
Since 1917, Louisiana has led an effort
to replenish the sea.
It started dumping oyster shells,
limestone, and concrete onto beds
so that new oysters could attach to them.
It's something the Louisiana wildlife
and fisheries department still does today.
But it was too little too late.
Experts say that today, less than 1%
of America's wild oyster reefs remain.
But 230 miles west of Scott's oyster farm,
conservationists are celebrating
some small but significant oyster-shaped success.
It looks like one, two, three, four, five,
six oysters have grown on.
Narrator: Seth Blitch has been working
to restore Louisiana's coastline for nearly a decade.
This cluster of oysters and clams is a really good sign.
Seth: This is the rock.
So the rock in the cages is generally about that big.
And it's got a whole bunch of life on it.
Look.
Narrator: The rocks he's talking about
start out in big wire cages called gabions
that get lowered into the water
to give oysters something to attach to.
Since 2017, Seth and his team have dropped
nearly 2,000 along this shoreline.
Seth: I'm standing and actually kind of
up on the oyster reef itself.
This year in 2022, we're putting another mile in.
So all told, by the end of this summer,
we'll have 2 ½ linear miles
of restructure here in Calcasieu Lake.
Narrator: Calcasieu Lake is an estuary,
which is basically a transition zone
between rivers and the ocean.
It's surrounded by coastal wetlands,
which work best as a line of defense
against high tides and storm surges
when they're reinforced by structures like oyster reefs.
Seth: If you look at the rock by itself,
it's about that tall.
If you look at the rock with the oysters,
it's almost twice, over twice as tall.
And so that's how the reef actually grows in height.
And that enhances its value
to protect this shoreline right here,
by abating some of the wave energy
that comes across the lake.
Narrator: Building the reefs helps slow down erosion,
which is a huge deal in Louisiana.
Since the 1930s, an area of land
the size of Delaware has disappeared.
Part of the problem is that levees built
to stop the Mississippi River from flooding
also block sediment that would otherwise
build up the shorelines every year.
Instead, the sediment washes straight out into the gulf.
Seth: Oysters won't save the coast by themselves,
but they are definitely part
of a network of things that need to happen.
Narrator: Since Seth's team installed
the first mile of gabions five years ago,
they noticed that erosion
in that part of the shoreline slowed down.
Seth: Those oysters will create a living, mature reef
that'll maintain itself over space and time.
Narrator: And building up a healthy oyster reef
that's off-limits to harvesting
provides huge benefits to fishermen.
These oysters that I'm holding right now
are are going to reproduce.
And a lot of those larvae, that spat,
will float through the lake,
and they'll settle on some of the reefs
that do get harvested.
Narrator: This approach has succeeded
on the East Coast in the Chesapeake Bay.
Fishers here harvested more wild oysters in 2021
than they had in 35 years.
That's because conservationists have spent decades
seeding more than 5.4 billion oysters
on 1,200 acres of newly restored reefs.
Even then, oyster populations
in the bay are still at only 1% to 2%
of their historic levels.
Further north, New York Harbor
is seeing a promising rebound, too.
Seventy-five million adult oysters
now grow on shells, stone, and porcelain
planted by conservationists and volunteers
with an initiative called the Billion Oyster Project.
Scott: I would like to see sanctuary reefs,
never dredged or never fished at all.
And if we had those located
throughout the bay in various spots,
you'd always have brood stock
or parent oysters to reseed the natural stocks.
Narrator: For now, Scott still has to rely
on seeding the oysters that he'll eventually harvest
and sell to restaurants.
Scott: We have to have the oysters
under mechanical refrigeration
within one hour of harvest.
From that point on, as long as they stay
refrigerated below 45 degrees,
then we're good.
We're good to go to the restaurant.
Narrator: Scott sells most of his harvest
locally in New Orleans.
Hey, how's it going, man?
Doing good, doing good.
We got a load for you today.
Narrator: He's handing over
about 1,000 oysters to JV Foods,
a local food distributor.
Scott: There you go, sir.
All right, we'll put the rest
in the cooler in a second.
Narrator: Today, they're delivering to an oyster bar
in New Orleans called Sidecar.
These are Point aux Pins.
This is actually the oldest farm in the Gulf.
I thought that would be a good way
to celebrate National Oyster Day.
Narrator: Oyster sommelier Lindsay Allday
and her team have been serving up Scott's oysters
since the restaurant opened in 2020.
Lindsay: They're really good and salty.
They're always nice and clean.
The meat's beautiful.
Got to take those and recycle them, yeah.
Narrator: Lindsay saves the shells
and sends them to a recycling program
with the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana.
Lindsay: They've been running a program here
for I think about a decade,
running oyster shells back into the gulf.
Narrator: During the busy season,
Lindsay and her team will sell
around 10,000 oysters a week,
sourced from Scott and other farmers across the country.
And they serve them with everything
from horseradish to hot sauce.
We also asked Scott for his tips
on how to dress an oyster.
Scott: There's a lot of people
that ask what my favorite topping on an oyster is,
and I don't necessarily have a favorite.
I just have a least favorite,
and that's cocktail sauce.
I don't feel that these oysters have to be covered up
with cocktail sauce.
So this is a little mignonette that we make
that I feel accentuates the oyster
without covering it up.
There we go.
Take that.
A little bit of this right here.
There's some vinegar sauce in there.
Mmm.