Last Thursday, 12 local high school students from Salisbury Christian School had an opportunity to learn the importance of oyster restoration with an interactive lesson taught by Perdue Farms Chairman Jim Perdue, who also serves as chairman of Oyster Recovery Partnership and holds a doctorate in Marine Fisheries.

Students learned about the environmental importance of the Chesapeake Bay’s keystone species and the critical role we all play in the bay’s overall recovery.

The students joined ORP and Perdue associates to help fill hundreds of bags with oyster shells, which will be used for oyster hatchery production – giving students the opportunity to directly contribute to increasing the number of oysters filtering the bay’s waters.

Oysters are filter feeders; one oyster filters approximately 50 gallons of water per day.