Ooh yes, today we are hearing all about oysters! Also seascape restoration, pseudo-mangroves, living seawalls and a good use for potato chip waste. This one’s for you if you’ve heard that 85% of global oyster reefs are degraded thanks to humans (yikes) and if you want to know how we can help bring them back 🦪👻
Professor Melanie Bishop is a coastal ecologist who researches changes to temperate environments like coastal erosion, nutrient enrichment, and marine urban sprawl, as well as engineering interventions to create habitat and conserve native biodiversity in degraded seascapes. She co-leads the working group of the World Harbour Project as well as the Living Seawalls Program, which is part of the Project Restore with SIMS.
You can find Melanie at Macquarie University. You can find and contact me @seaweed.people.
Links to research, projects and stories touched on in this ep:
Living Seawalls with Project Restore
Biodiversity benefits of scaling up marine eco-engineering (research)
Variable effects of substrate colour and microtexture on sessile marine taxa in Australian estuaries (research)
New York’s Billion Oyster Project
Oyster reef restoration around the world (The Nature Conservancy)
Reef Builder - restoring oyster reefs in Australia
BESE - potato waste products for oyster reef restoration
This episode was recorded and produced on Gadigal/Wangal land in Eora. I acknowledge and pay respects to First Nations people and their elders past and present as the ongoing custodians of Sea, Land and Sky Country.