|
Inspiration and information to protect Our |
Ocean Book of the Month Each month in 2006, The Ocean Project will highlight a book focused on our blue planet or environmental sustainability. Books for all age groups will be covered, non-fiction and fiction, prose and poetry. If you have a suggestion, please let us know.
The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell
The story begins with New York City 's natural resources and geographical location. The city became the powerful force that it is today due to the convergence of several great rivers that form a deep and protected harbor. Thus, the Hudson River estuary, filled with nutrient-rich river water, was the perfect place for the growth of highly productive oyster beds. The rivers provided additional natural resources and opportunities for transportation, while the harbor became a natural port. And oysters, naturally, became a favorite food of New York City . Oysters were a dietary staple of the Lenape Indians from the beginning, and their popularity quickly spread to the Dutch and English colonists as well. But the popularity and ease of harvesting the oysters would be their downfall. As early as the 18 th century, the inhabitants of the city feared that their love affair with the oyster would soon be coming to an end. At first, the city began placing restrictions on who was allowed to harvest oysters. Soon, limits were placed on when the shellfish could be collected. As rapid advances in technology made the harvesting of oysters even easier, New York City also limited the use of dredges and steam power. But even as the popularity of oysters led to their overfishing, the shellfish population was facing an even bigger problem: pollution. As New York City grew exponentially in size, so did the constant stream of garbage, raw sewage, and other pollutants flowing out from the city into the coastal waters and open ocean. This led to outbreaks of diseases such as cholera and typhoid, but little was done to solve the problem. The city was reveling in its highly popular export, and did little to either restrict the sale of oysters or limit the pollution contaminating them from land. Even with the knowledge that the supply of oysters was rapidly dwindling, their popularity only continued to grow. Oysters were cheap, plentiful, and a wonderful money making crop for the city. But, as is often the case, all good things must come to an end, and the seemingly endless supply of oysters finally ran out when the last beds were closed down in 1927. Kurlansky's book functions both as a wonderful environmental history focused around a single object and a tragic cautionary tale of what can happen when a people's demand falls far ahead of the available supply, and human “externalities” such as pollution run rampant. The mountain of evidence he presents is compelling, and unfortunately, presents an all too familiar picture in which it is human nature to deny that a problem exists until it is too late. New York City knew of its oyster woes two hundred years before the last beds shut down, and yet the catastrophe was not prevented. In addition to providing fascinating insight into what might otherwise be a highly esoteric topic, The Big Oyster serves as a necessary reminder that the actions of humanity will be forever linked to the health and future of our environment. As Kurlansky writes, New York has "lost its direct connection to its own vast and once sweet-smelling sea." We can only hope that even though the Hudson River estuary is too polluted today to safely consume any oysters from its waters, New Yorkers and others may soon wake up and address the sources of pollution. It took decades to get so polluted and will take decades to clean up but if enough people care, the waters around New York, and all other cities, could be swimmable and fishable (and oyster-consumable) in the future.
For any purchase you make online by linking directly from this website to either the legendary independent bookseller, Powell's, or an independent bookstore in your community participating with Book Sense (if the latter, they will prompt you for your zip code to find the closest participating bookstore), a small commission will be sent to The Ocean Project to help us continue our nonprofit educational mission, thanks to you!
|
| Visit The Ocean Project Web Site |
Mark Kurlansky's fresh new take on the environmental history genre follows the grand history of New York City as it relates to one very important factor: the humble oyster. This new angle takes the reader through the history of New York City from the era of the Lenape Indians, through the oyster booms that helped to make the city famous, all the way through the noxious pollution that closed the city's last remaining oyster beds in 1927. This unique story – although its message remains powerful and sobering – has the refreshing ability to cut through the heavy-handed statistics that environmental literature is unfortunately so frequently rife with and connect the reader on a very personal level to the real consequences of human interference in the natural world.
© 2007 The Ocean Project - All rights reserved.
Images: © 2004 Wolcott Henry