"BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. — It’s time to agitate the oysters at St. Stanislaus High School on Mississippi’s Gulf coast.

Students on a platform below the school’s long pier gently shake their oyster garden’s wire cages as they pull them from the water, loosening mud and algae that might keep water and nutrients from baby oysters clinging to those shells.

These students in Bay St. Louis are part of a volunteer force along U.S. coasts that’s raising oysters from translucent spat the width of a soda straw to hard-shelled bivalves that can help restore depleted reefs.

Oyster reefs are a keystone of coastal ecosystems. Each oyster filters 25 to 50 gallons (95 to 190 liters) of water a day. Spat glue themselves to larger oysters and grow. The reefs provide habitat for shrimp, crabs and fish and protect shorelines."

Janet McConnaughey reports for the Associated Press December 15, 2021. [2]