July 22, 2019

The Great Baltimore Oyster Partnership – Planting The Spat

By RK&K Team Members

This year, RK&K’s Baltimore office participated in The Great Baltimore Oyster Partnership sponsored by the Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

In this program, baby oysters (“spat”) are grown at designated oyster garden locations in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, October through June. Over the course of nine months, 50 RK&K employees took the time to keep the garden clean by scrubbing the 20 cages one to two times per month.

RK&K successfully planted 21,275 oysters in the sanctuary at Fort Carroll.

RK&K successfully planted 21,275 oysters in the sanctuary at Fort Carroll.

After nine months, the matured oysters are taken by boat to a protected oyster sanctuary in the Patapsco River, where they will live out the rest of their lives.

In early June, RK&K successfully planted 21,275 oysters in the sanctuary at Fort Carroll. We grow oysters because of their amazing ability to filter pollution out of the water. A full-grown oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water every day!

Two hundred years ago there were enough oysters to filter all of the water in the Chesapeake Bay every three days. Today it takes the remaining oysters over a year to filter the same amount of water.

Because of the nature of the work we do in the Baltimore Inner Harbor, it is important to us to do our part to help our community – on land and at sea.

Overall, the program was a huge success because it supported the healthy harbor initiative and allowed employees from all disciplines to come together to support an important cause.

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