Imagine living in a city of islands, separated by the bays and rivers of one of the most productive estuaries on the face of the earth. In such a city, we would be able to see the animals around us. The fish, birds, dolphins, seals and whales of a thriving natural ecosystem. This could be New York. We are a waterfront city with over 500 miles of coastline surrounded by what once was one of the greatest natural places in the world (The Big Oyster by Mark Kurlansky and Gotham Unbound by Ted Steinberg are both fascinating accounts of the historic abundance of animal life in New York Harbor). Thanks to the excellent work of many industrious New Yorkers, the Harbor is the cleanest it’s been in over a hundred years. It’s not yet the great, astonishingly abundant ecosystem it once was, but it is bouncing back and the animals are returning. Half the days of the year, most of the Harbor is clean enough to support the animals that used to thrive, and technically the water is clean enough for swimming.
I know the animals are returning because I have seen them. I have had the great fortune of spending a good deal of my professional time in, on and under New York Harbor. In just the last fifteen years, the rapid increase in abundance of wild animals in the harbor has been incredible. The following are just a few of the many examples I have witnessed personally in that time.
In one half-mile section of the Arthur Kill, between Staten Island and New Jersey eleven mating pairs of ospreys build their nests and hunt for fish. The Bronx River has a handful of trees that fill up with black crowned night herons every night, all summer long. Late at night, in the summer a pair of northern skimmers carve elegant figure eights into the surface of Newtown Creek, all the way back in English Kills. On summer evenings, when the tide is right, hundreds of common terns and laughing gulls pluck small fish out of the water right next to the Statue of Liberty.
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