Oysters Found at Castle Hill Park

While I was out with other NRG staff to monitor a salt marsh at Castle Hill Park this week, we found oysters growing along the shoreline attached to rocks, mussels, and other debris. I was especially surprised to see so many spat, which had settled either last fall or this spring. The spat was covering the rocks and had settled onto some of the larger oysters. It was a promising beginning of an oyster reef. It's possible that the oyster spat are descended from the oysters that were placed on the Soundview oyster reefs. We only saw the intertidal zone as the tides were coming in and were only wearing knee-high boots. From what I have observed so far, it seems like there are even more oysters here than at Soundview and who knows what is in the lower intertidal and subtidal.

Here's a photo of one of the rocks covered in oysters and oyster spat:

There were also oysters attached to tires (left) and mussels (right). There are very few mussels at Soundview. At Castle Hill the oysters are replaced by mussels further upstream Pugsley Creek. Surprisingly, the oysters were growing as high in the intertidal zone as the Spartina alterniflora (right), salt marsh cordgrass, which is usually associated with mussels.

I couldn't resist taking a photo of this. It's an old leather purse with mussels growing out of it! 

Castle Hill Park is located at the mouth of Pugsley Creek, which is on the other side of Clason Point from  Soundview Park and flows into Westchester Creek, which then empties almost immediately into the East River. I'm going to have to do some further explorations of this area to see if I could find more oyster refuges. I'm especially interested in Ferry Point Park, which is on the other side of Westchester Creek and is undergoing a huge restoration. Here is a photo of the point where we found the most oysters, looking towards Soundview Park. Castle Hill Park really has a beautiful view. There are a lot of abandoned boats and barges and you can see the Whitestone Bridge on the other side.