French poet Leon-Paul Fargue wrote “Eating oysters is like kissing the sea on the lips.”… Barnegat Bay is also rebounding due to environmental stewardship programs to build oyster reefs under the watchful eye of Gef Flimlin of Rutgers University and local volunteers…How did the endangered American oyster, also called the Eastern oyster, experience this dramatic comeback? I recently visited the New Jersey Aquaculture Innovation Center at Rutgers, located at the end of a gravely road on the banks of the Cape May Canal. On the aquatic factory tour directed by David Jones, who coincidently doesn’t eat oysters, I observed oyster seeds in various stages of maturation as they were fed algae from the adjacent waters. “We sell an average of 10 to 12 million oyster seeds annually to the oyster farming industry in Delaware Bay and elsewhere,” said Jones. Nearby, local oyster farmers harvested Cape May Salts and other brands under the watchful eye of researchers.