New York City is building a wall of oysters to fend off floods (2021) | Hacker News Reader

New York City is building a wall of oysters to fend off floods (2021)

bloomberg.com

96 pointshobble44 comments

Floods and thus investment in better flood prevention will only increase in the coming decades, it will be interesting what innovative solutions that spawns. It seems like even this century-old branch of engineering still holds room for experimentation with new methods.

Interesting that this particular project is run by a nonprofit. I hope it works out.

Flood prevention will become such a huge industry that everyone will have to move to coast.

I've always assumed that Halliburton has a plan to corner the market.

Netherlands: It's my time to shine.

I've volunteered a few times with the BOP and it's a really great experience. Would recommend if you're in NYC!

https://www.billionoysterproject.org/volunteer

Hard to get a spot generally!

aw, shucks! well, when life gives me a lemon, guess I'll take my oysters and go home!

I can understand how this would reduce erosion (although that benefit would seem negligible ROI vs (concrete?) wall dam engineering)

but how is an undersea wall going to even partially reduce flooding, exactly?

https://archive.ph/QAij2

> So can the humble oysters really save New York City from flooding? “No, they can’t, “ says Pete Malinowski, the founder of the project...

“But they’re a critical part of the many different interventions that need to happen.”

How come probably the most important intervention, building sea walls around Manhattan et al, isn't happening?

I've long thought that eventually the SF Bay will be dammed, with locks, etc, at golden gate.

There is a museum in SF that shows exactly what would happen if that were to happen. It was proposed in the early 20th century. The conclusions from those experiments they did was it does not end well for most of the bay area if that happens.

Well, sea level rise from climate change isn't gonna end well for most of the bay area either.

If you're ever in the area check out the US army Corp of Engineer's Bay Area hydraulic model. It was built 70 years ago to simulate the effects of one such proposal.

https://www.watereducation.org/aquapedia/san-francisco-bay-m...

It is happening. Manhattan is raising the heights of its circumference land.

Oysters are arguably more effective than sea walls.

>"No, they can..."

> how is an undersea wall going to even partially reduce flooding

They interfere with storm surges. The same way reefs force waves to break, dissipating their energy offshore.

I'll add to that- in addition to wave breaking from shoaling (i.e., transition to shallow depths), coral reefs and oyster beds increase bottom friction.

Surface waves are only the displacements on the surface that we see. The water column is also perturbed below the surface, and depending upon on the wavelength and amplitude, the perturbation can go down pretty far.

If you track the water particles as the waves pass by, you would see the particles traveling up and down and back and forth in orbital motions. In shallow water (relative to the wavelength), the sea bottom prevents downward motion, so the orbital motion is flattened into a back and forth motion near the bottom, and near the surface the waves increase height and break at the top.

If you have things like coral reefs or oysters (or an undersea wall), the back and forth motion is impeded, and energy from the wave is dissipated (which reduces the surface displacement).

Here's an article on experiments quantifying the energy dissipation: https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1312/9/9/1007

Maybe they should have used sponges instead :D

Looks like it will act similar to rock armor (around 9:00 in the video)

https://youtu.be/3yNoy4H2Z-o

“The Billion Oyster Project: Why Oysters?” https://www.billionoysterproject.org/ecosystem-engineers

TALEA beer in Brooklyn just did a collaboration beer with billion oyster!

If you like oysters, the all-you-can-eat BOP annual fundraiser is one of the best events, in terms of fun and value, one can go to. Purveyors fly in from around the continent to show their wares. The liquor sponsors are great. And the venue is usually unique.

The front page image is bothering me: are they really placing shells inside plastic nets? Aren't nets a big pollutant?

Only if they’re drifting.

what do you mean? In time, those nets will start to degrade and spread in the water. You will have billions of little plastic pieces floating around. How do you get them out?

I looked through the site those don’t look like plastic. They look like galvanized steel.

Anyone got any info on how this has progressed? Cool project.

> So can the humble oysters really save New York City from flooding? “No, they can’t, “ says Pete Malinowski, the founder of the project

“But they’re a critical part of the many different interventions that need to happen.”

You're upset the article seems to be telling us both sides of the story. What's the deal?

I find these flippant comments rather annoying where it only seems that the poster has geniusely summarized the whole article with their acute senses

They aren't being genuine, and copying one quote out of context is not summarizing the article.

> poster has geniusely summarized the whole article with their acute senses

In fact they haven't even genuinely summarised even the quote they have half-copied. Let alone the article.

> I find these flippant comments rather annoying

What I find annoying is the tendency to drag half a sentence out of context and parade it around as if that proves some point.

for >90% (a made up stat) of the population, it does though. the majority of people are too lazy to double check any of the information they learn from whatever source they are receiving it. the people making these edits know this. they lose no sleep at night about it.

The poster literally copied only half the quote. The second half of the quote is “But they’re a critical part of the many different interventions that need to happen.” Does the original comment really seem accurate to you?

Might as well give up then, why bother if it won't singlehandedly save the city? If Batman wouldn't do it, neither will I. Incremental improvements are for idiots.

Restoring New York City’s natural flood defence’s is insufficient per se. We will still need to build a wall. That doesn’t mean we should only build the sea wall.

They help with the Great Pain of Space, though.

The crazy thing about that story is that they have the what right but not the why.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com