Jump in, get engaged! Olys settled on rip-rap, rocks, shorelines, beaches, and restoration sites are signaling that they are here, ready to surge and re-assume their time-honored role in building and sustaining healthy, productive waters. If the diminutive, native Oly can play an outsized role in estuary restoration, so can you. Follow us on social media and sign up below to join the Oly movement in the San Francisco Bay!
There are lots of ways to support Olympia oyster restoration in the San Francisco Bay, from talking to your friends and colleagues to joining us at an Oyster event. The most impactful way to help is to stay involved. Learn more about ways you can support native oysters in the San Francisco
Bay below.
Help us keep this conversation going. Talk to your friends about oysters in the Bay.
Join the Native Olympia Oyster Collaborative, (NOOC) on Instagram
Visit the Coastal Conservancy’s Olympia oyster webpage and join the oyster mailing list for Olympia updates!
The Estuary & Ocean Science Center is partnering with Hog Island Oyster Company and Conservation Corps North Bay to pilot an oyster shell recycling program starting in 2026. The shells collected from Hog Island Oyster Company restaurants, the largest source of shell in the region, will ultimately be utilized in Olympia oyster restoration and living shoreline projects around San Francisco Bay. But first, the EOS Center will study the pilot program’s logistics to recommend how to accomplish shell collection from restaurants for restoration purposes in a low impact, carbon-neutral way. Although the oysters we eat at restaurants are usually the Pacific oyster, the primary aquaculture species in the region, the shells that are produced can help to restore the native Olympia oyster!
Shells of Pacific oysters make a perfect substrate for the smaller Olys to find space to settle and begin making their own three-dimensional structure of shell for other organisms to benefit from. Using the shell from commercial aquaculture as a resource for native oyster restoration is a great example of circular reuse; what might be trash becomes a valuable asset. The shell recycling program is also a creative way to raise awareness and engage community in the restoration process. But it is important to know if these efforts are worth the considerable resources it takes to make it happen. Does collecting shells from restaurants, making sure they dry over a prolonged period and are free of pests, collecting them into appropriate aggregates, and putting them in the right spot in the Bay pay off for Olys in the long run? This new program will find out.
You can be part of this exciting movement: eat an oyster, build a reef!
Eating Pacific oysters at these participating restaurants helps to build native Olympia oyster reefs in San Francisco Bay!
Do you use iNaturalist or Seek? Input your observations from your shoreline walks into these applications. They are valuable for monitoring oysters everywhere and you can contribute to a collective database to support biodiversity science. All you have to do is observe!
Many Olympia oyster restoration projects and beds are visible at low tide. Below are links to the NOOC story map with information about these sites. Be sure to check the tides and aim for very low tides if you’re hoping to see them. Do not leave the public trails and accessways to get closer to the oyster reefs.
There is an abundance of diverse material about the health of San Francisco Bay and the restoration work happening there. Please dive in.
Article on ancient oyster shells
Eelgrass restoration video by Elizabeth Sellinger/Bodega Marine Labs
FOCC Friends of China Camp Oly article
2025 State of the estuary executive summary
SFEI- SF Baylands Resilience Metrics Handbook
Open Road 7-minute clip on Oyster restoration (You Tube)
The Archeology of Refuge and Recourse: Coast Miwok Resilience and Indigenous Hinterlands in Colonial California by Tsim D. Schneider, 2021
Consider the Oyster by M.F.K. Fisher, 1941 & 1954
Down by the Bay: San Francisco’s History Between the Tides by Matthew Morse Booker, 2013
Heaven on the Half Shell: The History of the Oyster in the Pacific Northwest, 2nd Edition by David Gordon, Samantha Larson, and Maryann Wagner, 2023
The Living Shore: Rediscovering a Lost World by Rowan Jacobsen, 2009
The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco-Monterey Bay Area by Malcolm Margolin, 1978
The Oyster Book: A Chronicle of the World’s Most Fascinating Shellfish—Past, Present and Future by Dan Martino, 2024
The Oysters of Locmariaquer by Eleanor Clark, 1959 & 2nd printing, 1966
The Rise and Decline of the Olympia Oyster by E. N. Steele, 1957
The Tales of the Fish Patrol by Jack London, 1905
