![]() Locals also can deliver shells to the Kill Devil Hills Recycle Center, which has a special collection spot.Īnd while Vegas is happy to take contributions from enthusiastic folks who perhaps had a big oyster roast to celebrate a special occasion, the Wanchese site isn’t technically open for drop-offs, and the KDH center is quite particular about making sure people are careful with what they drop off. It’s actually against the law for you to take these oyster shells.’ ” Thomas takes the shells to Manns Harbor and washes them before storing them at a location the Marine Fisheries Division lets NCCF use. “ ‘They’ve found a lot better use for them, helping the ecology. “You have to sort of explain it to people,” he says. “You know you’re helping somebody, and plus it gets me out of the house.” Thomas has had people stop him at the dumpsters and ask if they can have the buckets he’s swapping out, or if they can take the oyster shells and use them for things like lining their driveway. A little weight, a little smelly,” Thomas says. On average, he’ll take 15 to 20 5-gallon buckets of shells from Blue Water and a couple of buckets from Sugar Shack each week. Rather than getting his pickup truck smelly, Thomas hauls the buckets on a utility trailer. He downplays his contribution, explaining it away as about four hours of work every other Monday when he makes his rounds. Thomas is passionate about the environment and has volunteered with the Coastal Federation for about eight years, hauling shells from the annual oyster celebration in Hatteras to Corolla and all points in between. There’s nothing glamorous about their work, but Vegas’ “go-to volunteers” – Thomas, Bill Trimyer and Paul Kutsko – are what makes the Restaurant to Reef program so successful, she says. ![]() And it’s why John Thomas doesn’t mind poking around the dumpsters of local restaurants to collect the shells. Supporting that ecosystem is why Hayes doesn’t mind hauling those buckets of smelly shells to place next to the dumpster. It’s really good that we are putting that back into the waters around here. If there’s not that substrate to live on, eventually they just die. “It’s really important for us to recycle these shells and create a substrate for the next generation to live on. I was really relieved once we found out the program was going to start over again,” Hayes says. Recycling oyster shells is a necessity, after all, since it’s actually illegal to send them to the landfill. He hasn’t had downtime yet to visit Wysocking Bay to check out the new reef, but is proud that his restaurant helped build it. It’s gone up exponentially the last two years with the amount of oysters we’re selling.” “Any given weekend day, we’ll have 30 gallons of oyster shells at the end of the day. “I know we are a big contributor because I lug the shells out to the parking lot every day,” Hayes says with a laugh, estimating the Blue Water haul to be in the “tens of tons” each year. And golly does he schlep shells by the bucketload every night. He strives to buy locally farmed oysters to support local watermen. He takes part in talks about oysters during events such as Taste of the Beach or the North Carolina Oyster Trail. Before coming to Blue Water six years ago, Hayes might have enjoyed sitting around a burn barrel in the winter, shucking oysters with friends from time to time, but now oysters are a huge part of his life. One of the biggest ambassadors from the kitchen is Evan Hayes, the executive chef at Blue Water. “They’re excited about it, the volunteers are excited about it, the chefs are excited about it.” “We’ve had people from states like Ohio and Pennsylvania who came for some of our educational sessions and it was totally foreign to them, but it really made them think about their food and how much work goes into what they’re eating,” Vegas says. These kinds of details prove fascinating to many of the diners who enjoy special lectures during October’s “Oyster Shellabration” week, for instance. Vegas says the NCCF already is looking at new sites for the next Restaurant to Reef project, hoping to find something locally around Roanoke Island. The recycled reef now can attract oyster spat – and other marine life, of course – looking for a new place to grow and the cycle continues. The Division of Marine Fisheries was working on another nearby project and agreed to offload the shells from its barge – “because they’re very nice,” Vegas says – as she and other NCCF officials enjoyed watching the process unfold from their own boat.
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