On weekday mornings, thousands of New Yorkers traverse the city by ferry. Thirty eight boats in the city’s fleet criss-cross the East River, travel up the Hudson, or loop around the bottom of Brooklyn to the Rockaways in order to bring people to work or school. In a city surrounded by water, the ferry is just another way to commute.

But after that morning rush hour, starting in April 2027, some NYC Ferries will be taking on a new task. They’ll transform into floating classrooms, giving the city’s public students an on-the-water, interactive lesson in marine science, the history of the city’s waterways, and what maritime careers could await them.

Those lessons will come from educators with the Billion Oyster Project, a nonprofit that works to restore oyster reefs across New York Harbor and help city residents connect to the water all around them. 

“We as New Yorkers have been disconnected by 100 years of danger and pollution and dirtiness from the fact that we are a water town,” says Brian Reagor, director of development at the Billion Oyster Project, which announced the partnership alongside leaders from the NYC Economic Development Council and ferry operator Hornblower Group on Nov. 9 . “[The harbor] is our biggest open space, and yet so few New Yorkers ever come anywhere near it.”

The 1 8-year-old Billion Oyster Project has long focused on education alongside its larger goal of r estoring one billion oysters back to New York Harbor. It crafts curriculums for city educators, brings workshops into classrooms, and has a partnership with the New York Harbor School on Governors Island, a maritime vocational high school , with parts of the nonprofit’s oyster restoration efforts.

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