Demi Johnson has been cultivating oysters off a Biloxi pier since seventh grade, helping to restore oyster reefs.
During a recent trip to Washington, D.C., the youngster was awarded a $1000 grant by the National Geographic Society for her environmental initiative, which would help her cultivate oysters.
In a 2023 interview with WLOX, the Mississippi resident stated, “After learning that oyster reefs and gardens are endangered, I felt inspired to help the environment and give back.”
Johnson received a Girl Scout Silver Award for her research on the Mississippi Oyster Gardening Program. She was proud of her achievement and aimed to make the study both pleasant and educational.
At Biloxi’s Schooner Pier, the young trailblazer launched her oyster farm as an environmental endeavor in seventh school. She traveled to her farm once a week, with help from the Department of Marine Resources, to remove debris and predators from the oysters.
She stated that she was assigned four cages in St. Martin Bayou between September 2022 and March 2023. Six cages were built at Schooner Pier from September 2023 to March 2024.
Since then, Johnson’s location has produced over 1,000 oysters this year, which will have a tremendous ecological impact by releasing millions of larvae into the environment.
The Walter Anderson Museum of Art in Ocean Springs, along with other young people from the Gulf Coast, teamed up with Johnson for the National Geographic Society Slingshot Challenge. The goal is to uncover the next generation of problem solvers and effective environmental champions.
Johnson added, “I created a video, submitted it, and was selected as one of the final 15. Then I found out I got $1,000 to spend on oysters.”
She was one of two kids in the United States to receive an award in the National Geographic Society’s Slingshot Challenge, out of over 2,100 submissions from across the world.
After earning the 2024 Significant Achievement Award for “Off Bottom Oysters,” she donated her $1,000 scholarship to the Mississippi Oyster Gardening Program.
Her work is the primary force behind a community education project to restore oyster gardens and conserve Mississippi’s endangered oyster reef population.
A series of tragedies have decimated oyster populations in Mississippi over the years.In 2009, the oyster industry supported approximately 500 employment and generated an estimated $24 million in sales for the state economy. Authorities paid millions of dollars but failed to save the oysters.
Johnson argues that the 2010 BP oil spill, as well as the 2020 opening of the Bonnet Carre Spillway, exacerbated the situation. “My solution is to partner with educational institutions to clean up programs and teach them to grow their own off-farm oysters,” she told me. “I’ve already been working on that myself.”