A unique project is enhancing New Jersey's oyster reefs through the help of local restaurants.

The Department of Environmental Protection Program recycles seafood shells from restaurants and uses them to improve the quality of the oyster reefs in the Mullica River near Atlantic City.

Our Ted Goldberg got to follow biologists and other experts on a boat tour to see how it all works.

There's something satisfying, right, about emptying the barge and having a bright eyed well over 100 tons of Oyster Bay being put right back into the water body.

The DEP is using recycled shells to boost the oyster population in the Mullica River.

Shellacking.

This pile of shells is satisfying to watch.

And Commissioner Sean, lots of Rhett says the river is a better place for them than the trash.

Rather than take that, we shall deposit in a landfill.

We only have 14 remaining operating landfills in the state of New Jersey.

Right.

So we're avoiding that waste products, right.

Which in turn helps to reduce our carbon emissions.

11 restaurants around Atlantic City are contributing leftover shells, including more than half of Aceh's casinos.

The hope is to give oysters better conditions to grow and reap the benefits they provide.

Helping to purify the water that is flowing to the river or estuary itself.

In addition to that, the oyster roof reef will help to reduce erosion.

Providing tons of fish habitat, space filtering our waters, keeping them a little bit cleaner and, you know, creating our fishing opportunities for folks to be able to fish over these reefs.

So there's there's a lot of opportunity there.

But you can't just toss your leftovers in the water and call yourself an environmentalist before the shells are placed.

They have to sit in the sun for six months to get nice and clean.

That makes it easier for Baby oysters to settle in two weeks after they're born.

Clean Shell provides the substrate they need.

So a lot of times if you have Shell that's existing on the reef, it degrades over time or gets silted over May, getting crusted by other organisms and leaving less available real estate for oysters to inhabit.

The program has been around for five years and early returns look promising.

These are the results.

So we see a bunch of juvenile oysters inhabiting that shell and that's why we're out here again today to do it again.

If you're wondering how many shells have been saved up.

The answer is a lot.

Last year we did 40 tons at docks and about half that at night.

Before the DEP planted 150 tons of shells last year.

And they expect the program to ramp up now that $1,000,000 grant from Noah is coming later this summer.

Local businesses say the program is easy enough to follow.

Just separate shells from the rest of the garbage.

It's a great way to to get back to, you know, we sell a lot of oysters and we want to make sure that there's a lot of oysters to go around.

So, you know, it's working and and it's nice to get out of the shell, out of our landfills and into, you know, back into helping in the program.

I actually volunteered to be part of a food waste program within MGM because we're constantly looking for better reasons and better sourcing for sustainability.

So we're actually are in the process of calculating how much food we produce versus how much we put out to really try to calculate and.

Get less food in the trash.

The only way to support this program now is to eat at these restaurants, but that will change.

Public garbage cans for collecting shells should become available in the future.

For anyone hoping to turn culinary trash into environmental treasure.

On the Mullica River, I'm Ted Goldberg, NJ Spotlight News.