Ocean Hoptimism

We’re keeping the momentum going in February—this time with shells, shorelines, and a comeback story hiding in plain sight.  

San Francisco Bay didn’t always look the way it does now. Beneath the shipping lanes and seawalls, it once held sprawling reefs of native oysters—living infrastructure that filtered water, softened shorelines, and stitched the Bay’s ecology together. Most of us never knew them. Fewer still imagined they could return.

Yet here we are.

For our February 26 Ocean Hoptimism, we’re welcoming Casey Harper, Program Director at Wild Oyster Project—one of the people helping turn historical loss into living reef, shell by shell.

Casey’s path to oysters runs through fisheries decks in the Gulf of Alaska, fieldwork in New Zealand, and now the tidal margins of San Francisco Bay. Her work sits right at the intersection of science, community, and place—where restoration only works if people show up and stay in it together.

In this talk, Casey will trace the story of the Olympia oyster: from abundance, to collapse, to the carefully rebuilding reefs now taking shape around the Bay. Along the way, she’ll share what oysters actually do—for water quality, shoreline resilience, habitat, and hope—and why their return depends as much on neighbors and volunteers as it does on biology.

This is a story about realism without resignation. About tough organisms in a tough estuary. And about what becomes possible when restoration is treated as a team sport.

Join us February 26, 7–8pm at Faction Brewing, for an evening grounded in local action, collective effort, and the quiet power of rebuilding something that almost disappeared.

Bring friends. Bring curiosity. Bring your Bay love.

The oysters are coming back—and they’d like you on the team.

—Casey Harper