Their shells make great fertilizer, and the parts that restaurants throw away can be used to shore up New York City.

它們的殼是很好的肥料，餐館扔掉的部分可以用來支撐紐約市。

What if I told you that over 200 years ago some of the best oysters in the world were being harvested here?

如果我告訴你，200多年前，世界上最好的牡蠣就在這裡收穫呢？

When Europeans first arrived in New York Harbor, the oyster reefs everywhere 200,000 acres of oyster reef they were once a big part of the culture of New York are the food culture of New York.

當歐洲人剛到紐約港時，遍地的20萬畝牡蠣礁他們曾經是紐約文化的重要組成部分，是紐約的飲食文化。

Oysters used to be sold on basically like hot, dark cards.

以前賣生蠔基本都是像熱賣的暗牌。

What happened to them?

他們怎麼了？

Way eighth, Um, early New York boomed on an oyster economy, but it turns out these oyster reefs had a much more important role.

第八條 早期的紐約靠牡蠣經濟繁榮起來 但事實證明這些牡蠣礁有更重要的作用。

Mhm.

嗯

Uh huh.

嗯哼。

We had tragedy happened in Superstorm.

我們在超級風暴中發生了悲劇。

Sandy.

桑迪

People lost their lives.

人們失去了生命。

There were waves hitting structures because this rich three D mosaic of protective wetlands is no longer there.

有波浪打結構，因為這片豐富的三D馬賽克保護溼地已經不存在了。

That's something a team of designers and engineers are trying to solve.

這是一個設計師和工程師團隊正在努力解決的問題。

Funded by a federal disaster relief grant and designed by scape, a landscape architecture firm, the Living Breakwaters project is meant to safeguard part of New York City's coastline.

Living Breakwaters項目由聯邦救災撥款資助，由景觀建築公司scape設計，旨在保護紐約市的部分海岸線。

It's a roughly two mile long chain of breakwaters that air designed in a ecological way.

這是一個大約兩英里長的防波堤鏈，空氣設計的生態方式。

Thio create fish habitat.

亥創造魚的棲息地。

It is reducing risk, and the incredible wave action that was faced by communities.

它是減少風險，以及社區所面臨的不可思議的波浪行動。

And a major component of the project is the small and briny oyster.

而項目的一個重要組成部分就是小而鹹的牡蠣。

Oysters are ecosystem engineers.

牡蠣是生態系統工程師。

In the harbor.

在港口。

They helped Thio conglomerate and create reefs.

他們幫助Thio集團化，創造礁石。

They filter water, they clean water.

他們過濾水，他們清潔水。

But waster reefs actually reduce the impact of storms and storm surges and things like that when you had a complex three dimensional shoreline that is both oyster reefs and salt marsh and all of that working together.

但是，當你有一個複雜的三維海岸線，既是牡蠣礁又是鹽沼和所有這些一起工作的時候，廢礁實際上減少了風暴和風暴潮和類似的東西的影響。

In other words, before New Yorkers polluted and over harvested their harbor, oyster reefs used to provide a natural protection against big waves like the ones produced by Hurricane Sandy without the oyster reefs and with the whole shoreline has fundamentally changed.

換句話說，在紐約人汙染和過度捕撈他們的港口之前，牡蠣礁曾經提供了一個天然的保護，以抵禦像颶風桑迪產生的大浪，沒有牡蠣礁，整個海岸線已經發生了根本性的變化。

New York is more vulnerable toe storms.

紐約更容易受到風暴的影響。

That's why, since 2014, the nonprofit Billion Oyster Project has been working to restore the city's oyster reefs.

這也是為什麼，從2014年開始，非營利組織 "億萬牡蠣計劃 "就一直致力於恢復該市的牡蠣礁。

The group starts by collecting restaurants, discarded oyster shells, drying them and then seating them with oyster larvae.

該小組首先收集餐館、廢棄的牡蠣殼，將其烘乾，然後用牡蠣幼蟲進行座化。

Once back in the water those shells become the habitat for other oysters to build on.

一旦回到水中，這些貝殼就成了其他牡蠣的棲息地。

So far, about 28 million oysters have been installed in various sites around the harbor.

截至目前，港口周邊各站點已安裝約2800萬隻生蠔。

And while the water quality of the harbor has improved, the number of oysters in the water is only a tiny portion of what it used to be, and they're still not safe to eat.

而港口的水質雖然有所改善，但水中的牡蠣數量只有以前的一小部分，而且吃起來仍然不安全。

But something recently changed for restoration.

但最近有一些事情發生了恢復的變化。

To be successful, you need recruitment of wild oysters from the system, meaning wild baby oysters need to be able to find these reef installations in orderto latch on and establish a home for themselves.

要想成功，你需要從系統中招募野生牡蠣，這意味著野生小牡蠣需要能夠找到這些珊瑚礁裝置，以便為自己建立一個家。

That's something we've seen in very small numbers periodically over the years when we started looking in earnest at all of our sites around the city.

這是我們這些年開始認真考察全市所有站點時，定期看到的極少數情況。

And it's true for just about everywhere we have oysters this year, there's just a lot more natural recruitment.

而今年幾乎所有有牡蠣的地方都是如此，只是自然招募的人多了很多。

It's a way so cool.

這是一種方式，所以很酷。

So that's a a really exciting sign.

所以，這是一個非常令人興奮的跡象。

Ah, large scale arrival of wild baby oysters is good news for the living breakwaters project Oysters air not going to keep the water out of New York, but oysters that, combined with breakwaters, can be an integrated solution for these breakwaters air seated with oysters and the oysters will a glamorous on the structure attach onto it, grow and form their own kind of layer of complexity on top?

啊，大規模的野生小牡蠣的到來是一個好消息，活的防波堤項目牡蠣空氣不會阻止水從紐約，但牡蠣，結合防波堤，可以是一個綜合的解決方案，這些防波堤空氣坐與牡蠣和牡蠣將一個迷人的結構上附著到它，生長和形成自己的一種複雜的層之上？

It's also a social enterprise in the sense that were engaging school Children and teachers through the billion oyster project.

這也是一個社會企業，在某種意義上，參與學校的孩子和教師通過十億牡蠣項目。

So these guys, they're basically forming a reef, right?

所以這些傢伙，他們基本上形成了一個礁石，對嗎？

They're building more and more structure.

他們正在建立越來越多的結構。

The Living breakwaters project will be in construction through 2020.

生活防波堤項目將建設到2020年。

But rebuilding an entire ecosystem can take time or thinks that by 2050 the habitat around the breakwaters will be fully revitalized.

但重建整個生態系統可能需要時間，或者認為到2050年，防波堤周圍的棲息地將完全恢復活力。

I think New Yorkers need to get into this new paradigm of being a coastal city again, living with water, embracing our watery context, not fortifying ourselves off, but understanding what it means.

我認為紐約人需要再次進入這種新的模式，成為一個沿海城市，與水共存，擁抱我們的水環境，不是把自己強化掉，而是理解它的意義。