PADRE ISLAND, Texas — Have you ever wondered what happens to your oyster shells after you’re done eating them?
At Doc’s Seafood and Steaks, more than 64,000 pounds of them have gone to help rebuild Texas oyster reefs over the last three years.
The restaurant received a plaque this week marking its three-year anniversary with Sink Your Shucks, an oyster shell recycling program led by the Harte Research Institute at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.
Doc’s first collection in November 2023 brought in 300 pounds of shell. This September, the restaurant hit a record 2,900 pounds in a single month, according to the program.
Before Doc’s joined, manager Jackson Soward said the shells had a very different ending.
“A lot of them ended up in the dumpster. Yeah, a lot of them were thrown away,” Soward said.
Now, the shells go into bins that a Sink Your Shucks truck collects from Doc’s and other restaurants around the Coastal Bend. The truck holds about 4,000 pounds of shell. It takes the shells to the Port of Corpus Christi, where they cure for at least six months to remove bacteria before they return to the water.
Sink Your Shucks program manager Stephanie Tierce said a shell in a landfill serves no purpose, but one placed back in the bay can do much more.
“A shell that goes back into the water is gonna start to create habitat and regenerate those oyster reefs,” Tierce said.
Tierce said baby oysters swim for about two to three weeks and need a hard surface to attach to. Without one, they eventually die. On a single large shell, she counted 10 oysters that had already attached.
Those oysters do more than build a reef. One oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water a day, and reefs provide habitat for the shrimp, crabs, and fish that help feed flounder, trout, and redfish.
Founded in 2009, Sink Your Shucks is Texas’ first oyster shell recycling program. It has collected more than 3.5 million pounds of shell and restored about 45 acres of reef. Crews have worked in Copano and Aransas bays and are currently focused on St. Charles Bay.
The program now collects from 19 restaurants, about 14 of them in the Coastal Bend, along with oyster festivals and local oyster farms.
For Soward, the appeal is that diners can be part of the work, with “everybody” having “their own little piece in a new reef being rebuilt.”
Community members can also help by volunteering at restoration events held each May and October. Learn more here.
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