The Nautical Nerds
Giving the Reef a Billion-Oyster Spa Day
The Nautical Nerds
Giving the Reef a Billion-Oyster Spa Day
About Nautical Nerds
Our Mission
We’re Nautical Nerds - a bold, science-driven nonprofit on a mission to restore the Great Barrier Reef’s water quality using one of nature’s most powerful filter feeders: oysters.
Over 90% of the world’s oyster reefs are gone, and Far North Queensland is no exception. Industrial oyster dredging in the 1800s and early 1900s tore through hundreds of hectares of oyster beds. Since then, floods, sediment runoff, and pollution have stopped reefs from ever recovering - until now.
Our mission is clear: deploy 1 billion Blacklip Rock Oysters over the next 10 years across the reef’s most polluted river mouths. These native oysters will filter out nutrients and sediments before they reach the reef, naturally repairing water quality and giving the ocean a Billion Oyster Spa Day - every day.
We start with 500,000 oysters in our pilot, grown in eco-secure cages and monitored with real-time sensors - but this is only the beginning of a long-overdue return to how our coastal ecosystems once functioned.
🦪 Did You Know? In places like Chesapeake Bay (USA), oyster restoration has brought back fish populations, improved water clarity by over 40%, and sparked massive community pride. We’re bringing that same global success to the GBR.
🌱 How We Work
Shell-Based Reef Restoration
We recycle oyster shells from local restaurants, cure them to remove pathogens, and strategically layer them at key river mouths - creating permanent, interlocked reefs where oyster larvae can settle and grow. These shellbeds kickstart the natural reef cycle again in areas where oyster populations were wiped out over a century ago.
Oyster Filtration Systems
We deploy juvenile Blacklip Rock Oysters in SEAPA Stormbreaker® baskets suspended on adjustable longlines. These are positioned in nutrient and sediment hotspots - such as the Burdekin, Herbert, and Johnstone rivers - where oyster filtration can have the greatest impact on water quality.
Smart Monitoring Tech
Every oyster line is fitted with real-time sensors to measure water clarity, nutrient levels, temperature, and oyster survival rates. Additional sensors are deployed out on the reef and upstream to track how floods, temperature shifts, and rainfall affect the entire system. This tech gives us live data - and answers.
🦪 Did You Know? One adult oyster can filter up to 30-50 liters of water per day. Multiply that by a billion and you're talking trillions of liters of cleaner ocean every week.
Why Oysters?
Because they work - better than anything else.
Unlike other restoration methods that take years to see impact, oysters deliver fast, measurable results. Just 100,000 oysters can filter up to 20 million liters of water daily, removing dissolved nitrogen, sediment, and algae-driving pollutants. Compared to mussels, seagrass, and artificial filters, oysters are unmatched.
Blacklip Rock Oysters are native, disease-resistant, and thrive in the warm, turbulent waters of Far North Queensland. They tolerate cyclones, resist parasites, and grow rapidly in high-nutrient conditions. This makes them the perfect bioremediation species for restoring the reef's balance - naturally.
Our Billion Oyster Spa Day movement isn’t just about oysters - it’s about community, hope, and giving nature the tools to heal itself.
🦪 Did You Know? Unlike farmed oysters for food, our oysters are never harvested. They remain in the water for life, working 24/7 to clean and heal the reef.
Our Impact
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In our first 12 months, we’ll deploy 500,000 native Blacklip oysters across Far North Queensland’s river mouths - filtering out up to 40 kg of nitrogen and over 2,000 kg of sediment every year. That means cleaner water, healthier corals, thriving fish habitats - and results in months, not decades.
Most oysters will be placed on reconstructed natural reefs, built from recycled shells to recreate the lost oyster beds that once protected the Reef. In areas where reefs can’t yet be rebuilt, we’ll use floating cages to keep the cleanup going while nature catches up.
By Year 3, our hatchery and marine ops will be scaled to deploy 100 million oysters a year, setting the stage for a billion oyster spa day - giving the ocean the deep clean it deserves.
By Year 10, we’ll hit that billion - forming the largest oyster-based reef restoration in the southern hemisphere. Our goal? To work ourselves out of a job by rebuilding self-sustaining oyster reefs that do the heavy lifting long after we're gone.
🦪 Did You Know? Each year, Queensland rivers dump around 15,000 tonnes of nitrogen and 5 million tonnes of sediment into the Reef lagoon. Blacklip oysters are one of the only scalable ways to filter this naturally, safely, and affordably.
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We’re not just building oyster reefs - we’re bringing the Great Barrier Reef back to life, one oyster at a time.
The Billion Oyster Spa Day isn’t just a campaign. It’s a growing movement of people who believe the reef is worth fighting for - and healing it can be something we all take part in.