interested move forward with dogs and human because of the preclinical animal testing that we saw where we saw almost an almost immediate lowering of blooglucose d maintenance of blood glucose for a prolonged period of time. You think "New York", you're thinking this right? But this is New York too. these city kids from Brooklyn are getting their feet wet and not just because it's raining. Everybody say meteorological! Meteorological! They're on a field trip to New York Harbor. Oh look at those! Getting down and dirty with oysters. We decided that we wanted to help students get to the watershed, conduct research and ultimately become citizen scientists themselves. So this is protocol four, protocol four is all about what? With support from the National Science Foundation, Pace University educator Lauren Burney and her team are getting middle school kids involved in an ambitious restoration program called the billion oyster project. And so New York Harbor used to be one of the momost proroduive estuaries on the entire planet. More biomass produced in this estuary than anywhere else in the entire North Atlantic. Now it's sitting in around 1 percent of its historie abundance. Murray Fisher co-founded the project. Now he's partnering with Bernie to broaden its reach getting more kids like these into the field learning oyster bed restoration and exploring science firsthand. This is an oyster Toadfish What we found is that if you want to restore the New York Harbor, the way to do it is you have to restore the oyster ecosystem. which is really important because they're filter feeders and they clean our water and the environment basically. We do physical measurements of the oysters. Middle school teacher Michael Seymour is all for it. This active education and active instruction, this is kind of the best you can get where you're physically measuring things and actively contributing to a database that's for the the greater popular good really. That's math. That's math and science and technology and engineering not just taught but live. And kids are catching on. I used to like hate nature because I thought the grass was disgusting andnd when yostep on all the mud gets on your pants and everything. What changed in my heart was that when I saw oysters when I saw them helping us when I learned about them I heard that millions of them die every day. So we need them in the water for it to be clean. We learned how to do like a lot of stuff including water quality like PH, dissolved oxygen, ammonia. There's a web site designed to connect kids and their work and the New York Aquarium is onboard too. A metro area of 20 million peope living cheek and jaw with an ocean wilderness is a mind boggling concept. And that's what the New York Aquarium is engaged in telling people about. That's what the billion oyster project is engaged in telling people about right. So why shouldn't we work together. And Bernie plans to expand the program beyond New York. The idea is to allow kids to communicate in real time but then allow for others in other places to say hey what's going on in New York Harbor. Let me see what these kids are doing over in Australia. So we're creating this smart and connected community here in New York City but then allowing that to be able to grow into other communities. Using oysters to teach kids how to preserve the natural treasures in their own backyards. Now there is a pearl of wisdom for you. We'll be right b back withore Science Now after this brief break.