We took the ferry to the Harbor School on Governor’s Island to volunteer with the Billion Oyster Project. For clarity, the Billion Oyster Project is an ongoing effort to bring oysters back to the Hudson. The Hudson area used to be abundant in oysters, but due to over consumption slowly disappeared. Oysters also have an filtering effect, and while there, I read that one oyster can filter 50 gallons in 24 hours, and one billion could clean the Hudson every three days. To return to topic, we reached the school and met three other volunteers. We originally were going to help with the spawning, but the oysters weren’t quite ready. So instead, we helped with the shells the spat (oyster larvae) would latch onto. After a brief tour, we found ourselves some work gloves and some boots, and set to work. Jeremy, our ‘boss’ you could say, set us to three separate jobs. First, we shoveled shells into wire boxes. Next, we shook the boxes and then washed them in four separate tubs. The shells had to be clean because the cleaner the shells, the higher the chance of spat attaching, a lot like how reefs form. We then tipped the shells into net covered tubes, which we finally tied off and stacked. The pile of shells was massive, and they were left out in the elements for a year to make sure everything was dead and as clean as possible.  There were different shell types depending on the region, and some conch and clam shells were in there. Despite it being cold and miserable outside, the work was fun, and I’m pretty sure I annoyed Jeremy with my endless questions. I tried my hand at all the jobs, and thoroughly soaked myself when I was washing. It was a thoroughly enriching fieldwork, and we wish to work with BOP again. The BOP wasn’t going to solve all our problems, but it would be a big victory for the New York area, and this visit helped me to remember that we can make a comeback.