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28d (edited) • 🔑 Insights & Teachings
🦪 Oysters: The Quiet Workers Cleaning Our Seas
1. Once upon a time, the water cleaned itself.
Before we dredged, polluted, and overharvested our coasts, oysters formed vast reefs along shorelines like Norfolk’s. They weren’t just food. They were infrastructure. Each oyster filtered litres of water every hour, quietly removing excess nutrients and particles. Clearer water meant healthier seagrass, more fish, and resilient coastlines. The system worked — without machines, chemicals, or management plans.
2. Then we removed the cleaners and blamed the water.
As oyster populations collapsed, the water turned murkier. Algae blooms increased. Biodiversity dropped. We responded with treatment plants, restrictions, and expensive fixes — all while missing what had changed. The problem wasn’t just pollution. It was the loss of the living system that handled pollution. We didn’t just lose oysters. We lost a function.
3. Now we’re learning how to let nature do the work again.
The Norfolk oyster restoration project isn’t nostalgic — it’s practical. By restoring oysters, we restore a process: filtration, balance, resilience. The oysters don’t argue. They don’t need incentives. They just get on with the job, every hour of every day. Sometimes the most advanced solution isn’t new technology — it’s remembering how the system used to work, and stepping out of the way.
Why this matters
This isn’t just a story about oysters. It’s a reminder that many of our environmental “problems” are really missing systems. When we restore the system, the benefits cascade.
Here is someone restoring oysters that once numbered in the millions off the Norfolk coast in England.
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🦪 Oysters: The Quiet Workers Cleaning Our Seas
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