Overview
- City and nonprofit leaders announced the program Monday in a partnership led by the Billion Oyster Project with NYC Ferry, the New York City Economic Development Corporation and Hornblower.
- Organizers say students will take 90-minute off-peak weekday voyages to do hands-on activities such as water-quality testing, oyster restoration work, marine-ecology lessons and waterfront design exercises.
- The Billion Oyster Project has set a goal of roughly 10,000 students per year, though outlets report different launch timing and daily capacity limits, and officials have not publicly finalized full logistics.
- Educators will run the lessons aboard ferries and, according to reporting, may bring live oysters and small organisms for identification and handling to give students direct contact with harbor ecology.
- The effort builds on the Billion Oyster Project’s decade of harbor education and the New York Harbor School’s maritime job pipeline and could expand experiential STEM access while making use of underused ferry runs.