These shells are collected and recycled through an oyster reef rehabilitation program.
St. Mary’s University served 100,000 oysters during Fiesta 2025. Instead of discarding the shells, they were repurposed.
They were packaged up and driven 150 miles to the Texas coast to be used in an oyster reef rehabilitation project led by the Harte Research Institute out of Texas A&M University Corpus Christi.
“Oyster reefs across the world, the Gulf of Mexico and in Texas, have really seen severe declines that we just started learning about probably in the last decade,” said Jennifer Pollack, the Larry D. McKinney endowed chair for coastal conservation and restoration at the Harte Institute.
She said oyster reefs have been declining because of overharvesting and habitat destruction.
“Oyster reefs, we’ve learned, are the most threatened marine habitat,” Pollack said.
Oysters begin their lives as tiny larvae. Pollack said they need to attach to a hard surface to develop into the oysters we all know and love.
“They need a really stable structure so they might attach onto a pier or your dock,” Pollack said. “But the really ideal places are where there are already oysters.”
That highlights the importance of returning shells to the ocean — something Pollack has been doing in Texas since 2009.
How the process works
The Harte Institute works with partners year-round to collect used oyster shells.
“We need shells,” Pollack said. “That means lots of restaurant partners. We work with a lot of oyster farmers now in Texas who give us the shells as well. (We also work with) seafood festivals, like Fiesta Oyster Bake in San Antonio.”
The institute picks up and stores these shells at the Port of Corpus Christi. Typically, it takes six months for the shells to decontaminate to be ready to go back into the bay.
“They’ve got a lot of bacteria and fresh tobasco sauce and things that people put on them (when they’re collected),” Stephanie Tierce, the program coordinator for Sink Your Shucks, said. “We don’t want any bacteria that were on them before to go into the water.”
Sink Your Shucks is what this entire program is called. It’s organized through the Harte Institute, but completed with the help of hundreds of volunteers.
Each year, once those shells are dried out, the institute will organize an event to bag and drop them back into the bay. This happens at Goose Island State Park in Rockport.
“Goose Island is a great spot for fishing, boating, biking, birding,” Sara Rock, a park ranger interpreter for Texas Parks & Wildlife, said. “You might think, ‘Oh, it’s on the water, this is a swimming park, right?’ No, in fact, we have a bunch of oysters around us and they’re really sharp.”
Why Goose Island, then?
“This part of the Texas coast is really ideal for oysters,” Pollack said. “There’s the sort of perfect balance between saltwater and freshwater that mixes in this area that oysters like.”
Volunteers met this year on May 3 and May 10 to put shells back into the bay. The Harte Institute this year also hosted its first student event on May 7.
So, this is the process:
- The institute brings about 12 tons of shells to the tip of Goose Island.
- Volunteers use shovels to scoop dried-out shells into biodegradable mesh bags.
- Volunteers tie and knot those bags shut.
- Volunteers form a line out into the bay and pass the bags one by one for them to be placed at the bay bottom.
“We’re creating a living shoreline here,” Tierce said. “It’s for storm surge. It’s a habitat. There are so many benefits for these oysters going back in the water.”
Now, the Harte Institute is working to build more partnerships to expand the collection.
“We want to grow, but we want to go in a smart way,” Pollack.
