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Maryland residents hoping to land a summer job, listen up! If you're planning to live or work in the Ocean City/Salisbury/Cambridge area this summer, the Oyster Recovery Partnership may have a job for you.

Based in Annapolis, the Oyster Recovery Partnership was created in 1994 as part of a state action plan for reviving Maryland's once-thriving oyster stocks. It's a cooperative coalition of multiple partners that contribute to a large-scale restoration program to plant disease-free oysters back into Chesapeake Bay.

Dedicated to restoring the bay's oyster population, the partnership has planted nearly 4 billion oysters on 1,500 acres of oyster reefs, and through its Shellfish Recycling Alliance, recycled some 1,200 tons of shell used to fuel oyster growth.

The shellfish recycling program developed after local oyster shuckers contacted the partnership in 2010, concerned that thousands of oyster shells were shucked at area events only to be thrown away. Today, shells are collected from numerous Chesapeake area restaurants, caterers and seafood distributors. They're carted to the Horn Point Lab Hatchery, which uses the shells as setting material for spat that is planted in the bay and its tributaries. This partnership video explains the program in more detail.

And you, summer job seeker, could be a part of it. The non-profit organization seeks summer interns for its Ocean City shell recycling pickup, commuting between Cambridge to Ocean City and back, according to a post on the partnership's Facebook page

Candidates must be able to lift a 30-pound bucket of shell, posess a valid driver's license and pass a drug test in order to operate a staff pickup truck. Pay starts at $10 to $12 an hour with experience.

Interested? Shoot the partnership an email at [email protected]. Good luck!

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