((TRT: 04:42))
((Topic Banner: Oyster City))
((Reporter/Camera/Producer: Zdenko Novacki))
((Camera: Philip Alexiou))
((Map: Pasadena, Maryland))
((Main character: 1 male))
((NATS))
((Rick Levin
Co-Owner, Pasadena Boat Works))
All right, we're just going to the end of my pier, my property. And we're going to see Oyster City, which is a city and a marina that I built on two big floats.
((NATS))
I wanted to draw attention to oysters and how important they are to the bay.
((Rick Levin
Co-Owner, Pasadena Boat Works))
And I thought if I could create awareness. And this absolutely draws an amazing amount of boaters over the weekend. People come by. They take pictures.
And it has oyster facts, and it just tries to educate the public a little bit about the importance of oysters and what they mean to the Chesapeake Bay.
((NATS))
It basically all started at a…
((Rick Levin
Co-Owner, Pasadena Boat Works))
I went to a fundraiser for the Chesapeake Bay, and it was actually a big, like oyster roast. And they were chucking oysters. And they had a display where they took some
very, very cloudy water that you couldn't really see through. And they put two oysters in there and they told me to come back in a half an hour. And they told me the water would be crystal clear because oysters filter 50 gallons [190 l] of water daily. And sure enough, when I came back, that water was crystal clear and I was just, I was, it was very compelling.
((Rick Levin
Co-Owner, Pasadena Boat Works))
And I just thought, "Boy, if there was more oysters back in the bay, it could help clean the bay up." So, I just decided to create a hobby with this and build my own reefs.
((NATS))
What I have here is a actual reef that I designed into a boat lift that you can articulate. You can bring it up, so you can see it clear because the water is very murky in the Chesapeake Bay. So, basically for kids that like to come to my house and see what I'm doing, you can't really show them an oyster because you can't see it through the, the water. So, I've actually built a reef that I can bring up and so kids can get a better understanding of how oysters grow on a reef.
((NATS))
And these are three reef balls right in here that I had in the setting tank last year. And the microscopic larvae swam. They set and now they've been growing. And those are all oysters growing on those reef balls. And I built a water wheel that I incorporated in, that has a pump. And as that spins and it throws water down, it oxygenates this reef.
So, it's quite a neat little habitat. They're amazing filtering machines.
((NATS))
((Rick Levin
Co-Owner, Pasadena Boat Works))
They actually, oyster reefs create habitat for fish
to spawn and to grow and for protection. They're also delicious, nutritional, an amazing food source because they have such a benefit to the environment as well as to your eating health. They're loaded with vitamins and nutrients that you can't get in most foods.
((NATS))
((Rick Levin
Co-Owner, Pasadena Boat Works))
Oysters’ population in the Chesapeake Bay is only historically today at 1% of what it was. And there were enough oysters in the bay, like the turn of the [20th] century, where the bay would be filtered every day. Now, there's only 1% of that. So, it can take a year before it can get the filtering properties.
((NATS))
((Rick Levin
Co-Owner, Pasadena Boat Works))
All of these oysters here, on this property, which is about a total of 6,000, will go out on the reef within the next few weeks.
((NATS))
And I probably now have a total of 30,000 oysters growing there. I would say right now, with the amount of oysters that I have on that reef, they can filter probably about 150,000 gallons [560 cubic meters] of water daily. I put them in buckets and then I just take my boat out to the reef and then I just scatter them on the reef.
((NATS))
