Project:

Biodiversity of Oyster Reef

Students:

Sydney Hoffmann, Catherine McNamara, Fiona Mackenzie

School:

Long Beach High School, Nassau

Mentors:

Cody Onufrock

Abstract:

Oyster reefs are slowly but surely going functionally extinct.(Soniat, 2004) As the acidity of the water in bays and oceans lowers, oysters reefs are dissolving and struggling to reproduce. Oyster reefs have been overharvested around coastal New York for centuries and are basically non-existent today. Due to the lack of reefs, the biodiversity of the benthic invertebrates and infaunal reef dwellings has also suffered. The oysters help with cleaning and overall purification of the waters. There is a small restoration project in our high school pond. Oyster reef bags have been placed in the pond and are marked with a post. With putting an oyster reef in the pond, there will be positive, and negative consequences. Our goal is to find difference between the side with muck, and the side of the post with the oyster reef, through sampling, taxonomic classifications, and DNA barcoding.

Poster:

Team samples: