How you help the Chesapeake Bay with your purchase and installation of the Moonstruck Oyster Float
Did you know that one oyster can filter up to 5 liters (1.3 gallon) of water per hour? That’s a whopping 31.2 gallons a day!
Chesapeake Bay’s once-flourishing oyster population historically filtered excess nutrients from the estuary’s entire water volume every three to four days. The Bay was a healthy bay. Excess sediment, nutrients, and algae can result in the eutrophication of a body of water (excess nutrients causing algae blooms and subsequent oxygen depletion from die off). Oyster filtration can mitigate these pollutants.
Unfortunately, today, filtering excess nutrients from the estuary’s entire water volume would take nearly a year due to a drastically lower number of oysters in our bay now. As a result, the Chesapeake Bay is increasingly polluted. But you can help…
Help save the bay with oyster floats.
Your Moonstruck Oyster Float’s oysters are performing just this filtration needed to help stop eutrophication of our Chesapeake Bay.
Research has shown that oyster feeding and nutrient cycling activities could “rebalance” shallow, coastal ecosystems if restoration of historic populations could be achieved. Furthermore, assimilation of nitrogen and phosphorus into shellfish tissues provides an opportunity to remove these nutrients from the environment.
Oysters are filter feeders, drawing water in over their gills through the beating of cilia. Suspended plankton and particles are trapped in the mucus of a gill, and from there are transported to the mouth, where they are eaten, digested, and expelled as feces or pseudofaeces. Oysters feed most actively at temperatures above 10°C (50°F).
Remember, one oyster can filter up to 5 liters (1.3 gallon) of water per hour (that’s 31.2 gallons per day) – and you’ll have 600 oysters in just one float.