Ellis Island public and the museum partially re-opened on October 28, 2013, after major renovations. Originally much of the west shore of Upper New York Bay consisted of large tidal flats which hosted vast oyster banks, a major source of food for the Lenape population who lived in the area prior to the arrival of Dutch settlers. There were several islands which were not completely submerged at high tide. Three of them (later to be known as Liberty Island, Black Tom Island and Ellis Island) were given the name Oyster Islands by the settlers of New Netherland, the first European colony in
Pacific oyster of cultch), silting (sediment runoff from land), and cluster separation (process of breaking up clusters of oysters into as many individual oysters as possible). In New Zealand, the Pacific oyster was unintentionally introduced in the 1950s, most likely through ballast water and from the hulls of ships. Aquaculture farmers at the time noticed the Pacific oyster outcompeted the endemic species, the Sydney rock oyster ("Saccostrea glomerata"), which naturally occurs in intertidal areas in the North Island. Early experiments in rock oyster cultivation procedures attached spat to cement-covered sticks and laid them down in racks. The farmers noticed, however, the Pacific