NEWBURYPORT — Wading through cool waters, preparing mesh bags to protect baby oysters and shucking a few grown ones to learn more about them, local fifth-grade students were all laughs and smiles Wednesday morning as they visited Parker River National Wildlife Reserve.
The field trip gave them an opportunity to participate in a pilot oyster restoration field experience in partnership with the Massachusetts Oyster Project.
Arriving at Lot 6 about 8:30 a.m., Molin Upper Elementary Principal Tara Rossi, STEM teacher Kristen Daigle, fifth-grade teacher Martha Trail and her students trekked around 20 minutes down the Stage Island Trail, arriving at a cutout taking them to the beach.
There, along with members of the Mass Oyster Project, they helped plant baby oysters – known as spat – that have been growing in a Newburyport upweller next to the harbormaster’s building.
“The whole idea is that Mass Oyster wants the kids to be environmental stewards,” Daigle said. “They’re going to be one day taking care of this whole ecosystem, and they want them invested at a young age.”
The Mass Oyster Project is a nonprofit dedicated to increasing native oyster populations in Massachusetts by restoring oyster reefs throughout coastal ecosystems to improve water quality, coastal resilience and biodiversity.
Recently, the group worked with the city to establish the oyster upweller, otherwise known as an oyster hatchery, inside what looks like an oversized white cooler.
The upweller has served as an incubator for approximately 60,000 baby oysters. Water from the Merrimack River is continuously pumped through the upweller while volunteers care for and monitor the growing oysters.
The baby oysters, mostly the size of pebbles, filter water as it rushes through the upweller. By filtering the water, oysters grow by consuming nutrients, according to massoyster.org.
As they get older, oysters are sorted into buckets by size so that they grow and consume nutrients at similar rates.
A single oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water a day, removing harmful pollutants. Removing pollutants reduce algal blooms and ocean acidification. Oysters will filter nitrogen to balance the pH of the water surrounding an oyster reef.
Students had a variety of activities once at the shore, with some dressed in bathing suits and taking the opportunity to enter the water up to their waists to help plant the oysters.
Others on land worked on varying stations, including one that saw adults and students working together to transport spat to mesh bags that would then go in the water, with the mesh ensuring the babies would not get eaten over the winter.
Fifth-grader Nathan Walker said his highlight was putting the spat into the bags, sharing he was glad to be helping make the ecosystem healthier.
“I’m looking forward to seeing how the waters in this habitat get less polluted, so it’s healthier waters,” Walker said.
Another station saw students using small knives to shuck open oysters. Fifth-grader Weston Traister said it was his favorite part of the day.
“You have to look for the back and find a ledge, then crack it open,” Traister said.
Fellow student James Carpenter said he was on something of a side quest while shucking oysters.
“When they told us about it, I was thinking, ‘Oh, I could just get free pearls,’” Carpenter said.
While he did not have luck finding any pearls, he still said he was having a lot of fun and was grateful that his teachers took them on the trip.
“It beats writing two paragraphs a day,” he said.
Watching over the students as they shucked, Rossi said it was an amazing experience watching the kids become so invested.
“I honestly feel like this is the stuff kids should be doing, getting out and having real life experiences that’s connected to what they’re learning about,” Rossi said.
Mass Oyster Project leader Andy Rosenberg spoke about how important the organization feels it is to get youths involved.
“All of this that we’re looking at is going to be theirs,” Rosenberg said. “They’re inheriting it, and we want to give it to them in the best shape we can. And when I say the best shape, I mean the healthiest Plum Island Sound that you can imagine. Putting oysters in the water goes in that direction.”
Matt Petry covers Amesbury and Salisbury for The Daily News of Newburyport. Email him at: mpetry@northofboston.com.