From Restaurants to Reefs: Creating a healthier Bay for all Typically, restaurants send all the shells from shucked oysters to a landfill along with the rest of the restaurant’s trash. However, when shucked shells are returned to the water, they create a future habitat for oysters. Through our Oyster Shell Recycling Program, we partner with multiple Houston and Galveston area restaurants to collect shucked oyster shells and return them to the Bay to create oyster habitat.

View our full list of restaurant partners that recycle their shucked oyster shells with us!

Current Restaurant Partners

For more information, please contact Shannon Batte at sbatte@galvbay.org or 832-536-2265.

It might sound strange, but oysters can be gardened! We work with bayfront property owners interested in becoming oyster gardeners (or oyster foster parents, if you prefer) to improve the health of Galveston Bay. Every spring, Galveston Bay Foundation staff train volunteers in each participating community to create and maintain oyster gardens using recycled oyster shells. In May and June, each volunteer suspends their oyster gardens in the water below their dock or pier then monitors the gardens for fouling, predators, and (hopefully) the growth of baby oysters—or “spat”—on the shells. By fall, those spat will grow up to one inch or more, at which point they’re ready to be transplanted onto nearby restoration reefs and continue their important water filtration work.

For more information, please contact Shannon Batte at sbatte@galvbay.org or 832-536-2265.

Please note that all of the oysters produced through our oyster gardening efforts are strictly for restoration purposes and are NOT for consumption.

Oyster Gardening Information Request Form

Become an Oyster Gardener

Oyster Gardener Training

Volunteer Time Log Oyster Garden Data Form

We work with volunteers to build linear oyster reefs, also known as oyster shell breakwaters, along eroding shorelines to create habitat and stabilize the shore. An oyster shell breakwater is created by placing mesh bags filled with recycled oyster shells parallel to the shoreline in a pyramid formation. The oyster shell breakwater not only provides new homes (the recycled shells) for baby oysters, it also protects the shoreline from wave action and thus reduces erosion. In addition, sediment will slowly build up behind the oyster shell breakwater, creating a protected habitat for marsh grass to flourish.

For larger-scale oyster reef restoration, we work with partners to place cultch material, such as river rock, limestone, or concrete rip-rap, on the Bay bottom and often place recycled oyster shells on top to provide the ideal habitat for native Bay oysters. These projects are typically constructed in deeper water and require the involvement of contractors to place the cultch, including shell, in large quantities, sometimes upwards of hundreds of tons in a single day. All of this material will then serve as homes for baby oysters.