Oysters, also known as “filter feeders,” not only taste good, they also have amazing capabilities. Oysters are bivalves, and they are the only bivalves that build and live on reefs. As the following video shows, oysters can filter an average of fifty gallons of water a day and up to 2.5 gallons of water per hour.
While oysters are eating hundreds of microscopic species that live in water, they also consume algae, dirt, nitrogen pollution and more.
According to scientists who have been working for years to clean the Chesapeake Bay, the oyster is referred to as a “keystone species” as its activities improve the water for species including fish, shrimp, crabs, birds and other animals in the ecosystem.
And where there are a few oysters there are tens to hundreds of thousands. According to the Chesapeake Foundation and the Delaware Center for Inland Bays, “an acre area of oyster habitat contains about 750,000 oysters that filter 15 to 40 million gallons of water each day.”
One wonders if oysters, with a bit of tweaking, could filter salt out of seawater?
