An environmental group on Wednesday took a major step to re-establish an oyster colony in Barnegat Bay. The American Littoral Society took several oyster seedlings by boat to an artificial reef about a quarter-mile off a section of Berkeley Township called Good Luck Point.

Volunteers who participated in the effort on Wednesday said when the boats were carrying the baby oysters from the dock, they carried away with them hopes of environmentalists and scientists of a cleaner bay that in the future will be home to sea life that has long ago disappeared.

Tim Dillingham, executive director of the American Littoral Society, said, "This oyster reef project is like putting the pieces back into the bay's ecosystem that are gone. We're going to bring the oysters back to this bay only by pure willpower and lots of hard work".

It has been said that the restoration effort started in April with the creation of the reef, 120 cubic yards of shells on the floor of the bay off Good Luck Point in the Bayville section of Berkeley Township. The reef serves as the base on which oyster spat in the bay can attach and grow.

Later in June a spat tank was created, which held nearly 11,000 oyster and conch shells in 70 netted bags. The environmentalists put nearly 1.5 million oyster larvae were into that tank. By doing this they hope that many would attach to those shells and grow for their eventual transfer to the bay.

It was said that students from Monmouth University's Urban Coast Institute also helped in the project, which was funded through a grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).