Oysters, because of their delicious taste, are loved by seafood lovers all over the world. So when you eat oysters, how do you deal with oyster shells? Everyone will definitely find this problem very strange, how can it be handled, or just throw it away.
But in New York, the United States, the people will never throw away the oyster shell at will, because here a ton of oyster shell can sell for a high price of 5,000 yuan, the United States will recycle about 680,000 pounds every year and pour it into the sea.
Delicious and nourishing oysters
Before answering the question of why the United States recycles oyster shells and dumps them into the sea, let's get to know this delicious and nourishing food.
Oysters, also known as oysters, as well as sea oysters, oysters, fresh oysters and other aliases, belong to the oyster family or swallow clam family, is a bivalve mollusk with an oval body and two shells, living in temperate and tropical waters along the oceanic coast. There are more than 100 species of oysters in the world, and about 20 species are produced along the coast of the mainland.
Among the many marine treasures, many people are only fond of oysters, in ancient Greek mythology, oysters are the food that represents love, the West calls it "God gives magic food", "ocean milk", Napoleon has a famous saying about oysters: "Oysters are the best food for me to conquer women and enemies"; The Japanese call oysters "the source of roots."
Oysters can not only be cooked, such as the familiar garlic oysters; And oysters can also be eaten raw, and oysters are the only shellfish in the ocean that can be eaten raw.
Imagine a fat, milky white mollusk spreading on ice, squeezed with lemon juice, and slowly feeding it into its mouth, as if the taste of the ocean were spreading through the body.
The taste of oysters inspired many writers, and Maupassant described the upper class ladies of France in "My Uncle Hule" as eating oysters gracefully: "The little square towel dragged, the mouth quickly moved slightly, sucked the juice into it, and the shell was thrown into the sea." ”
In the novel, Murakami delicately describes the sensation of oysters sliding down his throat: "That's the sensation of a Oyster slipping into the throat after Shablis's iced oysters slide into the throat. ”
Haruki Murakami also has a soft spot for oysters: "First cut the tomatoes and cucumbers into cubes and sprinkle them with dried shallots; And mixed with red wine vinegar crushed black pepper, adding some sour and spicy taste; Then cut the lemon into pieces, open the oysters with an oyster knife, place them in a plate filled with crushed ice, form a circle, and put some lemons. ”
In addition to the deliciousness of oysters, its nutritional value is also particularly high, Li Shizhen's "Compendium of Materia Medica" records: oyster meat "eat more, can finely invigorate the skin, strengthen the kidneys and replenish the yang, and can cure weakness, detoxification of erysipelas."
Oysters are rich in protein, vitamins, calcium, phosphorus, zinc and other nutrients and essential trace elements of the human body, modern medicine believes that oysters have strong liver detoxification, improve sexual function, purify blood, nourish the face, promote metabolism, improve immunity and other effects.
In addition to oyster meat, oyster shell also has certain medicinal value, chinese medicine has oyster shell this flavor medicine, can play a calming sleep, convergence pain relief, flat liver latent Yang and other effects.
The reason for the large number of oyster shells recovered in the United States
But the United States recycled a large number of oyster shells and put them all into the sea, certainly not for the medicinal value of oysters, so why does the United States recycle oyster shells in large quantities?
This has to start from centuries ago, the United States is a big oyster country, New York has the title of "oyster capital", according to some biologists estimate that New York Harbor hundreds of years ago had more than 200,000 acres of live oyster reefs, which are probably inhabited by billions of oysters, accounting for half of the world's oyster population.
But by the 19th century, people had begun to eat oysters like crazy, and because of the large number, the prices were also cheap, and street stalls and restaurants were selling this cheap and delicious seafood everywhere.
At the time, there was a report that at the end of the 19th century, the French could only eat 20 oysters per person per year, the British could eat about 100 oysters, and the Average New Yorker ate more than 600 oysters per person per year.
At that time, the center of New York City was full of oyster bars, oyster stalls, oyster carts, wooden signs marked "oysters one cent" or "six points to eat", even for cheap laborers who only earned $500 a year, it was completely affordable, and oysters were not a precious food. A celebrity chef in New York wrote a recipe for oysters that was more than 150 pages long.
But no amount of oysters can withstand eating like this, the most important thing is that the industrial pollution in New York in the 20th century was very serious, resulting in a plummeting water quality in New York Harbor, new York Harbor Oysters are getting less and less oysters, New York's oyster era, after lasting more than 200 years, to the middle of the 20th century, began to come to an end.
Poor water quality makes there are fewer and fewer oysters, and at the same time, fewer oysters make the water quality of New York Harbor worse and worse, and there are fewer and fewer marine life, thus forming a vicious circle.
Why is it that fewer oysters make the water quality worse and worse? Because oysters are natural purifiers: they can purify and filter seawater, remove pollutants in a natural way, an adult oyster can purify up to about 190 liters of water a day, and the reef area they form can also provide habitat for other marine life, dolphins, seals and other marine life will be attracted to this vibrant ecosystem, and biodiversity can be guaranteed.
And the oysters in New York Harbor can also play a big role, that is, the huge oyster reef formed by hundreds of millions of oysters has become a natural breakwater along the New York coast.
You know, New York is located on the east coast of the United States, belongs to the hurricane-prone area, in the past few decades, hurricanes "Sandy", "Irene", "Francis" and so on caused a lot of life and property losses in New York, and the lack of oyster reef this natural barrier will make the hurricane more destructive.
In order to improve water quality and reduce hurricane damage, New York Harbor urgently needed to build a huge oyster reef, and in 2014 a public welfare team recognized the problem and launched a "billion oysters project" to restore the number of oysters in New York Harbor to one billion in the 18th century.
However, slowly releasing oyster seedlings and waiting for it to grow is too slow, and it is not known how long it will take to restore to the huge oyster reef.
So the team decided to use oyster shells, and they partnered with restaurants in New York that collected oyster shells and gave them to the team.
The team's staff left the oyster shells in the open for about a year to naturally clean up the organic matter in the shells, and then send the cleaned oyster shells to New York Harbor High School, where students would place the bred oyster larvae on the oyster shells, and the combined oysters would be released into the waters of New York Harbor.
Because oyster larvae need to attach to some hard surfaces, and this will also attract more and more wild oysters to attach, wild oysters can help the number of oysters to grow exponentially, so with this method, the number of oysters recovery is getting faster and faster.
As of 2019, the Billion Oysters Program has cultivated about 30 million oysters in the waters of New York Harbor, and plans to cultivate 1 billion oysters by 2035.
These oysters will not return to people's tables as before, but will remain in the sea to continuously improve the ecological environment and withstand storm surges.
Write at the end
New York's experience of "turning oyster shells into treasure" has also attracted the attention and attention of many other countries to the ecological value of oyster shells, and countries such as the United Kingdom and Mexico are currently carrying out similar oyster cultivation programs.
Bibliography:
1.CCTV Finance. The New York experience of turning oyster shells into treasure. [J] Friends of the Farmer, 2020(01).
2.Zhang Beihai. New York Oysters. [N]Jingbao, 2010.08.28.
Author: Qiao Mu Editor: Wei Yang