Which country produces the most farmed oysters?
Oyster
As an ecosystem engineer oysters provide "supporting" ecosystem services, along with "provisioning", "regulating" and "cultural" services. Oysters influence nutrient cycling, water filtration, habitat structure, biodiversity, and food web dynamics.[23] Oyster feeding and nutrient cycling activities could "rebalance" shallow, coastal ecosystems if restoration of historic populations could be achieved.[24] Furthermore, assimilation of nitrogen and phosphorus into shellfish tissues provides an opportunity to remove these nutrients from the environment, but this benefit has only recently been recognized.[24][25][26] In California's Tomales Bay, native oyster presence is associated with higher species diversity of benthic invertebrates[27] but other ecosystem services have not been studied.[28] As the ecological and economic importance of oyster reefs has become more widely acknowledged, creation of oyster reef habitat through restoration efforts has become more important- often with the goal of restoring multiple ecosystem services associated with natural oyster reefs.[29]