On weekday mornings, thousands of New Yorkers traverse the city by ferry. Thirty eight boats in the city’s fleet criss-cross the East River, travel up the Hudson, or loop around the bottom of Brooklyn to the Rockaways in order to bring people to work or school. In a city surrounded by water, the ferry is just another way to commute.
But after that morning rush hour, starting in April 2027, some NYC Ferries will be taking on a new task. They’ll transform into floating classrooms, giving the city’s public students an on-the-water, interactive lesson in marine science, the history of the city’s waterways, and what maritime careers could await them.
Those lessons will come from educators with the Billion Oyster Project, a nonprofit that works to restore oyster reefs across New York Harbor and help city residents connect to the water all around them.
“We as New Yorkers have been disconnected by 100 years of danger and pollution and dirtiness from the fact that we are a water town,” says Brian Reagor, director of development at the Billion Oyster Project, which announced the partnership alongside leaders from the NYC Economic Development Council and ferry operator Hornblower Group on Nov. 9 . “[The harbor] is our biggest open space, and yet so few New Yorkers ever come anywhere near it.”
[Photo: Billion Oyster Project]
Aquatic lessons
The 1 8-year-old Billion Oyster Project has long focused on education alongside its larger goal of r estoring one billion oysters back to New York Harbor. It crafts curriculums for city educators, brings workshops into classrooms, and has a partnership with the New York Harbor School on Governors Island, a maritime vocational high school , with parts of the nonprofit’s oyster restoration efforts.
Through these efforts, Billion Oyster Project has taught more than 66,000 students about the Harbor and its inhabitants. But it wants to reach more, and specifically wants to bring more of those kids out onto the water.
Initially, Reagor says , the nonprofit considered buying its own boat, but it quickly realized that would be too expensive. A teacher at the Harbor School brought up partnering with the NYC Ferry. The city’s ferry boats are busy for the morning rush hour, from 7 to 10 a.m. But then ridership drops off.
Last year, the nonprofit approached NYC Ferry, the Hornblower Group (which operates the city’s ferry fleet), and the New York City Economic Development Corporation about using one of those under-utilized boats to take students out on the water.
[Photo: Billion Oyster Project]
Getting their sea legs
The floating classrooms will operate on school days from Labor Day to Memorial Day, taking up to two classroom trips per day during off peak hours. That can reach 300 students and teachers daily. The nonprofit’s goal is to bring more than 10,000 public school students onto the harbor annually.
The exact curriculum of the floating classrooms will vary depending on the ferry route. The boats will pick up students and teachers from any of the 25 ferry stops along the harbor and take them on a 90 minute field trip.
The primary goal of the floating classrooms is to simply introduce students to the harbor. “We’re going to talk about the animals that live in the harbor,” Reagor says. “We’re going to talk about the ecosystem and the food web. We’re going to talk about the history of the harbor, how the harbor was the centering point of the city for so many years.”
Students might be surprised to learn, for example, that there are seahorses all throughout the East River. They could meet one on the adventure if they’re lucky, Reagor says. They’ll also learn about the return of dolphins, whales, ospreys, and bald eagles to the harbor. All those animals are the top of the food chain, and they’re back because of efforts to revive oyster reefs.
Workers with the Billion Oyster Project place oysters in the waters near Brooklyn’s Bush Terminal Park, 2018. [Photo: Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images]
Bringing oysters back
In the 1800s, New York clearcut thousands of acres of oyster reef and overharvested the mollusk to the point where it was functionally extinct by the turn of the 20th century. Then, industrialization turned the waterfront into a hotbed of pollution. The 1972 Clean Water Act helped turn things around, and now the water is as clean as it was in the early 1800s. “It’s actually one of America’s and the climate movement’s great success stories,” Reagor says.
That’s allowed oysters to thrive again. Billion Oyster Project has put about 200 million oysters and 19 acres of reef back in the water so far. Oysters filter the water, stabilize the shoreline against climate impacts, increase biodiversity, and create habitats for species like fish, crab, shrimp, and more.
Restoring New York Harbor also restores the image of New York as a water city, one teeming with maritime and environmental careers. New York County alone, which covers Manhattan, is home to 17% of all the marine jobs is the Mid-Atlantic region, according to the NOAA Office for Coastal Management .
Students can get on a marine career path through the Harbor School, a public high school that also offers a free associates degree. More than 50 of the school’s Vessel Operations graduates now work at NYC Ferry as captains or deckhands. But students can get primers on careers in aquaculture, marine biology, ocean engineering, diving professions, coastal sustainability, and more.
The second aim of the floating classroom initiative is to open students’ eyes to those kinds of opportunities . “We’re teaching STEM skills while also showing them a potential vision for their own futures, if they are so inspired,” Reagor says.
But even if students don’t walk away from a floating classroom voyage with the desire to pursue a marine career, that’s okay. “We have at least left you with a better understanding of the environment right outside your door,” Reagor says. “You’ve been on the harbor. It’s not this scary, mythical thing. The idea is making nature, the environment, and climate real to people.”
