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Jephta Sullivan is one of dozens of students at the New York Harbor School who do some of their best school work on the bottom of New York Harbor.

"Today I am one of the divers, so I'll be going down and surveying the area and also bringing up oysters so we can put spat on it and put them back down," Sullivan said.

But planting spat, or baby oysters, on old oyster shells is not just a hands on science project for the students at this unique public school. It is also part of an ambitious effort to rebuild the local oyster population and revitalize the underwater environment.

"We need the oysters to clear up our waters. Since we live on it, we must respect it," Sullivan said.

The oyster project got a big boost this week from a famous name. In honor of the 100th anniversary of his grandfather Jacques Cousteau's birth, Fabian Cousteau joined the divers to launch his new non-profit dedicated to ocean restoration called Plant a Fish. And that means a lot more funding for the oyster project.

"Oysters build reefs, they create shelter for fish and other crustaceans and they also provide invaluable food," Cousteau said.

Cousteau lives in Brooklyn, so even though he will be planting sea turtles in El Salvador, mangroves in Florida and corals in the Maldives, he wanted to launch his new organization in the murky New York waters, with the high school students he calls his foot soldiers. And it's not just about science, advocacy or restoration. There's also an important history lesson about oysters in the city.

"This was the largest oyster rookery in the world and it became a cash cow to build Manhattan and New York City in general. Now that there are no more oysters or very few, it behooves us to reestablish that balance that was here before we were," Cousteau said.

This oyster season, the students will help plant 130,000 oysters in the harbor. If it works, they will form a solid foundation for a reef.

"It's a native species that wants to be here and wants to clean up after us and all we have to do is give it a start," said New York Harbor School teacher Peter Malinowski.

Starting this summer, students will be able to concentrate on the project even more as the school moves from Brooklyn to Governors Island, where they'll grow the oysters from spat to reef.