For many just a tasty delicacy, the oyster may actually be the hero the world needs to fight environmental degradation — and volunteers like Kimberly Price are battling to repopulate the surprisingly powerful species.The 53-year-old is an “oyster gardener” who fosters thousands of the mollusks at her waterside home until they are old enough to be planted in the Chesapeake Bay near the US capital Washington, where they clean the water and can even offset climate change.Far removed from the menus of seafood restaurants, oysters also have a supremely practical use as prolific water filters — with an adult able to process up to 50 gallons (190 liters) each day. This produces a healthier habitat, boosting plant and animal life, which experts say can also help waterways capture more planet-warming carbon dioxide. But today, just one percent of the native oyster population found in the bay before the 1880s remains, due to pollution, disease and overharvesting — leaving a mammoth task for environmentalists.Volunteers like Price are crucial to these efforts led by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF).For around nine months, they keep infant oysters in cages at their docks to give them the best chance of reaching adulthood. Then they put them to work at helping preserve the planet.”We humans destroy everything, right? So this is like, let’s fix our problems: how do we try and correct this?” Price, a housing consultant, told AFP.At her Maryland home, where ospreys flew overhead and tiny fish swam below, she pulled up a mesh cage marked “Not for sale or human consumption” suspended by rope in the water.Inside on large, old oyster shells — many recycled from restaurants — were half a dozen smaller live oysters each about the size of a knuckle.When Price got them last summer, they were no bigger than pinpricks that the CBF had received as oyster larvae from a specialist hatchery before bonding them to shells in setting tanks.Price’s role has involved scrubbing her eight cages and rinsing them with fresh water every two weeks to remove organisms that can restrict oxygen and hinder feeding.When AFP visited in late May, she was giving them a final clean before joining other volunteers returning the oysters to the CBF to be planted on sanctuary reefs in the bay, where fishing of the mollusks is banned.- ‘We can get there’ -It’s part of an ambitious goal that the nonprofit and its partners set in 2018 to add 10 billion new oysters to the bay — America’s largest estuary — by the end of 2025.Around 6.7 billion have been planted so far, CBF oyster expert Kellie Fiala said at the group’s headquarters, adding that the population is “trending in a positive direction.””Thinking about how many oysters used to be in the bay, we still have a ways to go,” she said, but insisted that “working together, we can get there.”A key challenge is a lack of substrate in the bay — the hard riverbed material that oysters need to grow on — because for many years, shells were removed to be used in building driveways and gardens.”Folks then just didn’t understand the importance of putting that shell back so it can be a home for new oysters,” Fiala said.To address this, the organization is encouraging volunteers to make “reef balls” — igloo-style concrete blocks that can serve as artificial underwater habitats.This initiative, like oyster gardening, encourages community participation ranging from schoolchildren to retirees.Some of those volunteers, including Price, arrived at the CBF’s office next to the bay to drop off their buckets of homegrown oysters ready for planting. Each got a rough tally of how many they had brought based on the average number of babies on a handful of shells. For Price, it was what she celebrated as a “very good” total of around 7,500.Her oysters were loaded with others onto a small, single-engine boat that the captain, 61-year-old Dan Johannes, steered towards a sanctuary reef in a tidal tributary of the bay.There, two interns began dumping the 20 buckets overboard, with the oysters splashing into the water.The planting process took no longer than a minute — 75,000 oysters, raised for almost a year — returning to the bay.

Federal agents clashed with angry protestors in the Los Angeles area for a second day Saturday, shooting flash-bang grenades into the crowd and shutting part of a freeway amid raids on undocumented migrants, reports said.The standoff took place in the suburb of Paramount, where demonstrators had gathered near a Home Depot that was being used as a staging area by federal immigration officials, the Fox 11 news outlet reported.They were met by federal agents in riot gear and gas masks, who lobbed flash-bang grenades and tear gas at the crowd, according to news reports and social media posts.The immigration raids are part of US President Donald Trump’s ongoing crackdown on undocumented immigrants. The Republican was elected to a second term largely on a promise to crack down hard on the entry and presence of undocumented migrants — who he likened to “monsters” and “animals.”Following the latest clashes in Los Angeles, authorities vowed to prosecute offenders and warned of an escalating security presence.”We are making Los Angeles safer. Mayor (Karen) Bass should be thanking us,” Tom Homan, Trump’s point man on border security, said on Fox News. “We are going to bring the National Guard in tonight.”FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino said multiple arrests had been made following Friday’s clashes.”You bring chaos, and we’ll bring handcuffs. Law and order will prevail,” he said on X.On Saturday, amid chants for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to get out, some protestors waved Mexican flags while others set a US flag on fire, the Los Angeles Times said. Cement blocks and overturned shopping carts served as crude roadblocks.A crowd swarmed a US Marshals Service bus exiting a nearby freeway, with authorities later closing on and off ramps to keep protesters from taking over the highway.The tense standoff came a day after masked and armed immigration agents carried out high-profile workplace raids in separate parts of Los Angeles, attracting angry crowds and setting off hours-long standoffs.”An insurrection against the laws and sovereignty of the United States,” White House deputy chief of staff and anti-immigration hardliner Stephen Miller said on X, sharing a video of protesters marching Friday outside Los Angeles’s federal detention center.Los Angeles, the second-most populous city in the United States, is one of the most diverse metropolises in the country. The suburb of Paramount, home to about 50,000 people, is 82 percent Hispanic or Latino, according to US Census data.

US immigration agents detained and later allowed the “voluntary departure” of the world’s most-followed TikToker, Khaby Lame, after he “overstayed” his visa, authorities said Saturday.”US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Seringe Khabane Lame, 25, a citizen of Italy, June 6, at the Harry Reid International Airport, Las Vegas, Nevada for immigration violations,” the agency said in a statement to AFP.Lame entered the United States on April 30 and “overstayed the terms of his visa,” the statement said of the Friday detention, adding that he was released the same day.The Italian national, who is a UNICEF goodwill ambassador and has a following of more than 162 million on TikTok, “has since departed the US.”Lame had not immediately posted publicly about the incident as of Saturday afternoon.Since taking power in January, US President Donald Trump has delivered on campaign promises to tighten immigration controls and carry out a mass deportation drive — aspects of which have been challenged in US courts.Lame holds top spot on the wildly popular TikTok social media app, with 162.2 million followers and has risen to fame for his short silent videos mocking the convoluted tutorials and tips that abound on the internet.He punctuates his videos with a trademark gesture — palms turned towards the sky, accompanied by a knowing smile and wide eyes — as he offers his own simple remedies.The idea for his content came to him while wandering around the housing project where his family lived in Chivasso, near Turin, after losing his factory mechanic’s job in March 2020. His posts took off — helping him gross an estimated $16.5 million through marketing deals with companies in the period between June 2022 and September 2023, according to Forbes.