Kids save oysters

Most gardens are filled with blooming flowers, but the seabed under Virginia's Chesapeake Bay is sprouting another crop altogether: oysters. Over-harvesting, pollution, and disease have threatened the once oyster-rich Bay, but local students are helping the oysters bounce back through Schools Restoring Oysters to the Chesapeake (SROC), an oyster gardening program.

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In 1997, educators started SROC to teach students environmental stewardship while repopulating the Bay. On bi-monthly field trips, students test the water quality, then lug the oysters out of the freezing Chesapeake to measure their growth. In the spring, the mature bivalves are relocated to sanctuary reefs. A mature oyster acts as a "water filter," helping to clean the Bay.

The program, now run by the nonprofit Oyster Reef Keepers of Virginia, is making a difference educationally as well as environmentally. Last year, 110 schools participated, some nurturing nearly 20,000 oysters. For Jane Brown, a Marine Science instructor at Grafton High School in Yorktown, Virginia, oysters are the focal point of her curriculum. "When my students change the oil in their car, they're not going to throw it down the storm drain," she said. "They understand their impact on the world can be negative or positive."--Reported by Lisa Burdige

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