The Oyster Recovery Partnership has launched an oyster shell recycling alliance that will focus on collecting used oyster and clam shells from restaurants and caterers in the Baltimore-DC area, according to a press release.

Cleaned oyster shells returned to the Chesapeake Bay can provide habitat for new oysters.

Oyster shuckers, watermen and the partnership will pick the shells up and bring them to three drop-off points. The shells will then go to the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science Horn Point Lab in Cambridge. After a year, the hatchery will attach spat -- baby oysters -- to the shells and replant them in the bay, according to the release.

The pilot program collected more than 3,000 bushels of oysters, or 1.5 million shells, in the last 18 months, and volunteer Vernon Johnson said he believes the alliance can collect 5,000 bushels in the first year, according to the press release.