Re: [Paddlewise] [Fwd: Manhattan Island Swim]

Bob Denton wrote:
> 
> I met a team of NY Harbor divers on a dive boat here in Florida. This was
> their first dive apart from the Ny Harbor.
> 
> After the first tank they were absolutely astonished by the marine life. In
> all their diving in New York, they'd never seen a fish!

Boy, if ever there was an urban legend, this is one!  Cops are notorious
for exaggerating situations such as street crime they have seen (unless
they want to impress the public with the way they reduce crime; then it
is a different story and set of statistics) and so it is not to be
unexpected from the scuba cops.

I have seen plenty of fish on the river and in the harbor.  Fish
jumping. Fish swimming near the surface.

The River Project, an estuarium that shares the Pier 26 space with the
Downtown Boathouse, has traps it uses to capture aquatic life which it
also snares while volunteers snorkle.  It has several large tanks in the
building filled with the fish species caught right there in the
embayment.  Scores of different fish and crustaceans have been
identified.  The next time I am in there, I will get the figures and
post them here.

Remember that the city is going through some major capital expenses the
result of clean waters.  Marine borers, crustacean life which could not
thrive in polluted waters, have returned in the last decade to eat away
at the wooden piers.  One kind eats at the outside...you see the
resulting hour-glass shape in pilings all along the shoreline as if a
beaver had eaten away at them.  Another type, called a shipworm, bores
into the core of the wooden pilings and leave larvae that eat out the
heart of the piling causing it to collapse.

(I don't know if you remember but I joked about it in Paddlewise
earlier. One way of killing off the larvae is to wrap the piling with
plastic. This cuts off oxygen to the larvae and they die.  I was going
to print up some T-shirts saying "Save the Baby Shipworms" as a
neo-ecological joke but I hesitated because I thought someone might take
me seriously and mount a public outcry campaign against the practice. 
Besides the larvae "faces" aren't as lovably doe-eyed as are baby
seals.)

Mind you.  The waters can be murky.  You have a powerful river feeding a
constant flow of silt into the area.  The silty bottom also gets stirred
up with the fast currents.  But in places that are more isolated in the
harbor you will see quite a bit.  For example, a professional diver here
tells me that on a recent receational swim that he and Swim The Apple
arranged the visibility in the Erie Basin area in Brooklyn was quite
astounding given the silt and churning up.

Don't get me wrong.  Visibility isn't great, certainly not the level of
clear Northern lakes or tropical lagoons.  But the waters are not a
chemical wasteland.  Swim races go on regularly included the
round-Manhattan one; and shots are not required or particularly
recommended.  And Swim The Apple proponents are regularly stripping down
and jumping in.  One swim is scheduled for July 3rd off the southern tip
of Governor's island from the deck of a tugboat.

NYC is far from being a scene from Soylent Green.
-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ralph Diaz . . . Folding Kayaker newsletter
PO Box 0754, New York, NY 10024
Tel: 212-724-5069; E-mail: rdiaz_at_ix.netcom.com
"Where's your sea kayak?"----"It's in the bag."
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