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! -----Original Message----- From: owner-paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net [mailto:owner-paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net]On Behalf Of Sailboat Restorations, Inc. Sent: Wednesday, June 28, 2000 10:07 AM To: paddlewise Subject: Re: [Paddlewise] [Fwd: Mahattan Island Swim] Yuuuuch! An article in New York magazine a few months ago chronicled the misadventures of the NYPD unit that dives NYC waters looking for evidence of crimes, etc. (ie, people who's boots are, um, a little too heavy). The article quoted some sort of authority on the subject as saying that the waters around Manhattan, particularly the East River, are the chemical equivalent of "liquid fecal matter." If people want to swim in that, hey, that's their business. Not me, thank you. FWIW, out of five recent paddles in Western Long Island Sound, on two of those paddles I saw some form of medical waste floating in the water, and on one I saw a huge fuel slick (just outside Rye!) and several dead birds floating in the water. The other two times were relatively normal -- just the usual rednecks in motor boats, constant noise from airplanes flying over, and perpetual sirens on the shore, etc. . . . I'm up in Maine now. It's quiet here. . . and clean. Mark *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ *************************************************************************** *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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." ----------------------------------------------------------------------- *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
ralph wrote [snip] > I have seen plenty of fish on the river and in the harbor. Fish > jumping. Fish swimming near the surface. [snip] That's certainly encouraging. I should add to my earlier post (regarding medical waste and other pollution in LIS), that in one of the little coves I paddle to near Rye there are thousands and thousands of large oysters lining the floor of the cove. The cove is at an island with a few homes, and I asked a resident one day if he eats the oysters. He laughed and said that he wouldn't eat them raw, but he does throw a few on the grill and eat them He said that it was only in the last five years that they've been thriving again. Perhaps the waters are gradually getting better. But there's still so much horrific pollution (most of it illegal) going on in the area. . . I read recently that the president of the Sierra Club resigned in protest, saying (as best I recall) that the environmental movement was "fiddling while Rome burns." I hope he ends up being wrong, but I have my doubts. Mark *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
These divers had recently gotten their certs and in retrospect, the only diving they had experienced had been in training. The leader was an experienced harbor diver, but the comments came from the trainees. The leader has some interesting tales about body recovery from bridge suicides that involved the properties of mud and the feeding habits of crabs... cya *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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