Farmed oysters may boost New York's dwindling wild populations

Farmed oysters are mixing with and potentially adding to populations of wild oysters—a once-abundant species in New York's estuaries and rivers that has declined drastically over the last century. A new study, published in the journal Molecular Ecology, offers genetic evidence and the first documented proof that farmed eastern oysters are adding to and breeding with wild eastern oyster populations in the western and central Long Island Sound.