Featured image: Workers for the Billion Oyster Project prepare to place juvenile oysters in a waterway running through New York City. Credit: Diana Cervantes/Redux/eyevine

As the Sun dropped behind the Statue of Liberty on Saturday, a staff member for a conservation group unlocked a gate on a nearby island to reveal the ingredients for a potential oyster renaissance: stacks of ‘reef balls’, large domes made of oyster shells and concrete. They will soon be placed in tanks filled with free-swimming oyster larvae. Once the larvae latch onto the balls and mature, the structures will be submerged in the murky waters off New York City in an effort to revive a lost ecosystem.

Coastlines around the globe were once protected by oyster reefs, expansive masses of oysters that had fused to rocks and each other. Overharvesting and habitat loss have demolished about 85% of Earth’s oyster reefs in the past two centuries. But bringing them back could help coastlines to become more resilient to the effects of climate change, including intense storms and erosion, scientists say.