Oysters Found at Brooklyn Naval Yard

This weekend was Open House New York, a weekend where some organizations like museums and studios open up spaces to the public. It's an event that I've wanted to check out for three years, but it occurs on Columbus Day weekend so I'm usually in NH. This year I finally was able to participate and I never want to miss it again! Thomas and I had a fun-filled weekend. On Saturday we toured the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, the unopened section of the High Line, and the Brooklyn Distillery in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. On Sunday we went on an Old Croton Aqueduct tour led by the Friends of the Croton Aqueduct and went to a presentation about the restoration of the Westchester Avenue Station next to Concrete Plant Park in the Bronx. Hopefully I'll get the chance to write a blog post about each of these activities because they were each relevant to this blog, but I need to describe the most exciting discovery, which was finding oysters in the Brooklyn Navy Yard!

We went to the Brooklyn Navy Yard in the first place to visit the Brooklyn Distillery, which is New York City's first distillery since prohibition and was founded in 2010. They just moved to the Paymaster's building in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and were offering tours and tastings. It was interesting to learn about the history of alcohol production in the city, but when the tour was finished Thomas and I decided to take a tour of the Navy Yard since we were already there. We had been wanting to check it out for a while but there is always security so Open House New York was the perfect opportunity. We found a pier that had stairs running down the sides into the water.

When we stood on the stairs, we saw that it was some kind of mechanical control room that had been flooded. It made me feel like I was in a wreck. 

The most exciting part was when we looked down and saw oysters attached to the stairs!

 Some of the oysters were quite large (80-90 mm), which are probably between 4 and 5 years old.

We found this dead oyster. Thomas retrieved the top half of the shell to add to my oyster collection. : )

 Sunset over the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The juxtaposition of industry and nature can be quite beautiful. Thanks Thomas for the fantastic photos!

It is interesting that we found oysters here because New York Harbor School just put in an oyster nursery in another location of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. This shows that oysters can currently survive here and have been surviving for 4-5 years. You can read more about the NY Harbor School's recent activities here.

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.

Meadow Lake: An Ecological Overview

Meadow Lake is located in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. This park is the second largest park in NYC (after Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx). A former saltmarsh turned coal ash dump, the marsh was filled by Robert Moses in for the 1939-1940 World Fair. It is a brackish lake and has a tidal influence of two inches. The lake is surrounded entirely by highways: the Van Wyck to the East and Grand Central to the West. NYC Parks has a grant from the NYS DEC (Department of Environmental Conservation) to improve the water quality of the lake, which you can imagine is quite poor due to all of the highway runoff and the pollutants leaching from the coal ash to this day. Due to poor design, the two paths that line the lake's shore are flooded whenever it rains. Some sections of the shoreline are even reverting to native wetland plants in place of lawn. Despite its environmental and design problems, it is a highly used lake. Every day people are boating on the lake, running on the paths, or fishing from the shoreline. Below is a photo of one of the rowing teams that practices on the lake daily.

Besides poor water quality, the lake is also plagued by invasive species. The entire shoreline of the lake is lined with Phragmites australis, common reed, which is highly invasive. The slightly brackish water of the lake is ideal for Phrag because no other plant can compete with it. However, Phrag is not all bad. Red-winged blackbirds love to nest in its dense stands and whenever we go there, they are everywhere. See the blackbird hanging out in the Phrag with the ducks below.

The most threatening invasive is found lurking in the water. Snakehead is an Asian fish species that is also highly invasive. The snakehead is a top predator that can grow up to five feet long and can even “walk” on land short distances to get from one body of water to another. The fish was likely introduced to the lake by Chinese immigrants. It is a common fish in their diet and in their culture, releasing a fish into the water brings good luck. Flushing, a neighborhood bordering the park, also has a very high Chinese population. The following photo is from wikipedia because I don't have a photo of the snakehead yet. I plan on getting one soon though... either when we go out electrofishing with NYS DEC or when I land my first snakehead after I remember to get my fishing gear down here from NH. : ) 

I always see fishermen at the lake. My last visit, two Chinese men fishing on the shoreline caught a very fat fourteen inch Asian Carp (another fish that Chinese people probably introduced to the lake). They took it home along with some plants that their wives had collected from the side of the highway, probably to make a nice fish dinner. I wouldn’t eat either the fish or the plants. Both are likely loaded with pollutants from the coal ash fill and runoff from the highway. I am in favor of foraging in parks, but only when the plants have been growing in non-contaminated soil away from major roadways.

The lake is also home to some native species that are under threat. I have seen a few dead American eels on the shoreline, which had probably been caught by a fisherman and then discarded. American eels are being overfished due to the popularity of unagi sushi, which supposedly rivals bluefin in taste. Since the eel’s life cycle is still not fully understood, further fishing pressure on this species could cause this fish to become extinct if regulations are not put into place.  

Besides plants and fish, there are also several avian invasives as well. Canada geese are a fixture and decimate plants along the shoreline (well, everything but phrag…). I have also seen a mute swan. Although these big birds are beautiful, they are very vicious if they feel that they are threatened and compete with native species for resources. They were introduced to the United States from Europe and their population has exploded, so much so that their populations are now regulated. Below is a mute swan framed by Phrag.

We are planning two main projects to improve water quality: the daylighting of a drainage pipe from the Grand Central and a wetland restoration project along the shoreline that might include floating wetland islands. The project is still in the design phase and will probably experience many changes in the next four months. I will provide further details once they are finalized.

Another New Title: Restoration Research Assistant

I've actually had a new position working for Parks since the end of February but haven't assigned time to update my blog since my last job change... I was unemployed for three months and although I had many volunteer experiences that are relevant to this blog, between volunteering and applying for jobs, there wasn't enough time for me to write posts about them. I still maintain many of the contacts that I have made so it shouldn't be difficult to integrate them into the blog in future posts.

I really like my job. I'm working in the same office with the same people but my supervisor is Kathleen instead of Ferdie. We have two wetland restoration projects we are working on: saltmarsh and upland restoration in Soundview Park in the Bronx and a stormwater remediation project in Meadow Lake in Queens. I have been learning a lot from Kathleen because I have never worked on wetland restoration before. Working for Parks has lead to many interesting learning experiences. First working on oyster reef restoration, building fences on Prall's Island, and now this assignment. I think I would enjoy being a seasonal for a few more years. My learning experiences this year have included researching floating islands, reading stormwater and electrical maps, purchasing plants and other essentials, and experiencing the complex permitting process.

The Soundview project is under construction and Meadow Lake is in the design phase and should begin construction next year if permitting goes according to plan. I'll delve into the details in each of the projects in separate blog posts and I hope to be updating my blog more often than once every six months... : )

New Title: Heron Habitat Restoration Assistant

I just finished my first week working as the Heron Habitat Restoration Assistant on Prall's Island. Herons used to nest on the island, but environmental catastrophes (an oil spill and an Asian long-horned beetle infestation) have caused the herons to move elsewhere for nesting and feeding grounds. The best description of the island and its history I found on Mr Beller's Neighborhood Blog.

To get to work, I take the 1 train to the Staten Island Ferry, where my supervisor picks up the two other seasonals and I and brings us to the office at the Greenbelt Native Plant Center. From there, we drive a Parks truck to Saw Mill Creek Marsh, load the canoes in the water, and canoe 40 minutes to the northern end of the island.

The island is surrounded almost entirely by salt marsh (primarily spartina alterniflora). This is a view approaching it from the southern end. The island is shaped like an ice cream cone.

Here's a view looking south down the shoreline on the western side of the island. 

Looking northward on the western side. You can see the industry on the NJ shoreline. I found a live oyster that was over 6 cm on this beach. I think it would be a fantastic site for an oyster restoration project. : )

Currently, my job is to help construct a fence that will protect trees that will be planted in the spring with two other seasonals. The trees will hopefully serve as nesting habitat for the herons. In the effort to eradicate the long-horned beetle, all of the trees over 5 cm were cut down and mulched, eliminating all potential nesting habitat. Million trees attempted to plant 4,000 trees on the island a few years ago, but the trees were eaten by deer and rabbits over a period of a few days. Yes, there are deer and rabbits in NYC and they are increasingly becoming a problem because they are loosing habitat in suburban areas and are forced to forage in the city. This is why we need a fence. 

We are digging a trench a foot deep in order to place chicken wire and prevent the rabbits from digging under the fence. The chicken wire is going to be attached to a 7 ft tall fence. Organic pellets (which smell like a mixture of Christmas and pee because the ingredients are herbs and urea) are going to be placed around it to deter the animals. Fishing line and colored tape is going to form a web around the fence to scare off the deer as well. This thing is going to be a fortress.

So far I have enjoyed working here. It is nice to be outside all day surrounded by nature in New York City. It is a surreal experience. However, it is difficult to forget you are still in the city because the roar of traffic, planes, and construction is still omnipresent, albeit fainter and the island is covered in invasive plants and poison ivy...

Oyster Reef Restoration is Back in New Jersey

This article describes renewed oyster reef restoration efforts in NJ  by NY/NJ Baykeeper and features a video. Baykeeper has placed thousands of oysters in lantern nets and plans to monitor their growth and mortality in the Spring. The oysters have been placed at the Naval Weapons Station Earle Pier in Middletown, NJ.

Last year, Baykeeper had to remove the oyster reefs that they had restored throughout NJ because the reefs were deemed an "attractive nuisance." The restored reefs were constructed in areas that were closed to shellfishing due to low water quality standards. NJ has a $300 million shellfish industry and the NJ government.  It was thought that if people ate oysters from the restored oyster reefs, it would threaten the industry's reputation. These oysters will be regularly monitored by the Navy to dissuade any from harvesting the oysters for human consumption.

Salamander Monitoring with Students

About a month ago I assisted in the Salamander Monitoring Project that consisted of over 300 middle school students and teachers from around the city. Salamanders are considered bioindicators, they are extremely sensitive to the environment around them. If conditions are not right, they will not persist in the area. I went with other NRGers to receive training in montioring techniques and salamander and other species identification last month. With the students we conducted a biodiversity survey in Black Rock Forest and in parks around New York City in order to compare rural and urban habitats. There was even an article written about it in the New York Times. 

In the Black Rock Forest, my student group was from City College and they were a very smart bunch with an enthusiasm for nature and for lifting rocks. :) We found five salamanders: three Red-back salamanders, one lead-back variation of a Red Back Salamander, and one Northern Slimy Salamander. 

Their enthusiasm was a little too overwhelming for one salamander who lost its tail... but the students were relieved to learn that its tail would grow back eventually. We encouraged the kids to be a little more gentle with the salamanders and lifting rocks...

Our greatest group find was the Northern Slimy Salamander. It was the only one found that day. This species has been extinct from New York City for 150 years.

The students were really fond of the millipedes, which were also my favorite. :) 

Susan found a Two-lined Salamander next to our transect in a vernal pool. 

The second site I helped out at was in Van Cordlandt Park in the Bronx and the students were from Browning, an all boys school. Sadly we did not find any salamanders and two salamanders were found the entire day. This site was very different from the Black Rock site in ecology. We found many earthworms at this site, while in Black Rock we found none. Earthworms are actually not native to New York and have been affecting the area's ecology since their introduction by Europeans. They decompose the organic matter, such as leaves, which would normally provide shelter and a moist environment for salamanders. Accelerated decomposition also increases the availability of nutrients for plant uptake; however, many invasive plant species have the advantage because they are adapted to environments that contain worms. New York used to have native earthworm species but during the last ice age, the worms were wiped out. Native worms have slowly been moving up the East Coast, but the dissemination of European worms by humans has spead worms throughout the Northeast at a much faster rate. Most people think that worms are good for the soil, but not in the Northeast, except for your garden. 

Oyster Shucking Competition

Believe it or not, oyster shucking, or the opening of oysters, is a competition sport. Oyster shuckers want to be the fastest without damaging the oyster flesh, which can result in significant price reductions for the oyster because it is then only fit for selling for cooking purposes, such as stew, while undamaged pricier oysters are eaten raw. The fastest oyster shucker is Patrick McMurray, who set the world record of 38 oysters in under a minute in 2010. 

New York City has a long history of oyster shucking and it is still celebrated at an annual event called the "Oyster Frenzy" at the Grand Central Oyster Bar. They even made an ice sculpture!

There was events going on throughout the day. We arrived just in time for the first round of oyster shucking contestants to compete.

There was other entertainment as well. This is the Naked Cowboy that performed. Naked Cowboys are a variety of oysters grown in Long Island Sound. On my birthday I tried six different oysters and the Naked Cowboy was my favorite, in part because of the awesome name. : )

This is a photo from inside of the Grand Central Oyster Bar. It was packed. The restaurant was built in 1917 when Grand Central Station opened its doors.

Besides oyster shucking, there was also a beer shucking competition. This involved opening a case of bottled beer the fastest with a bottle opener. I was one of the last three contestants to sign up and opened a case of Pumpkin Ale, my favorite. Afterwards the shucked oysters and beer was given out the the contestants and the onlookers. Don't worry, nothing was wasted. :)

Here are the two final contestants for the oyster competition. That fistful of cash is the winnings: $3,000.

Oyster Spat Found!

Two weeks ago I went to the oyster reef with Danica to check the spat collectors and to our surprise we found oyster spat! In the photo below the oyster spat is the brown flat shell on the right with the white stripe down the center. To the left is a slipper shell, Crepidula plana, which is commonly confused with oyster spat. This species of slipper shell, or limpet, lives inside oysters and other bivalves, which is why it is so flat. 

Here is a close-up of the oyster spat. The small round encrusting organisms are barnacles.

Interestingly we only found oyster spat attached to the shell that had been sitting in the water for two months. There were no oyster spat found on the shell that had been out for a month or two weeks. Some research has shown that oyster spat are more attracted to substrates that have accumulated a layer of biofilm, or bacteria. This layer of biofilm takes approximately a month to produce. Although this is a possible explanation, I've talked to an oyster aquaculturalist and he said that oystermen put out shell only two weeks before it is expected for the oysters to spawn. Maybe there is another explanation...

Stay tuned for more baby pictures!

LaGuardia Spat Collectors

My most recent posts are full of links and are lacking photos. This post will change that. Yesterday I went to LaGuardia Airport to collect and replace spat collectors, a monthly activity that I have been involved in since June. The spat collectors consist of bags of oyster shell that are tied to a rope and weighed down with a rock to serve as an anchor. There are two bags per rope and there are two ropes. Sadly we haven't found any spat, but we have found a variety of organisms living inside the bags and attached to the rope, which further supports the fact that oyster reefs do not only provide habitat for oysters but other organisms as well. 

This is one of the ropes that the spat collectors were attached to. As you can see, it is completely encrusted with organisms, primarily hydroids. Hydroids are Cnidarians, so they are related to sea anenomes and can sting. It was so covered, the rope was difficult to pull up because it was slippery. We wore gloves to get a better grip and to avoid the hydroid's stinging cells.

Here is Eddie, an employee of the USDA who takes care of wildlife issues at the LaGuardia Airport. He is also a rock climber and has an extensive knowledge of knots, which came in handy in tying the oyster bags to the rope.

This is one of the spat collectors. It is completely covered with tunicates, which are also called sea squirts (because they can squirt water up to two feet) and sea grapes (because they appear, but do not taste like, grapes). They are highly tolerant of polluted water, which is probably why they are so numerous...

While I was waiting for the police to come open the gate for us, I noticed that there were oysters attached to the side of the boat launch. I have never been to this site when the water was so low, so I hadn't noticed them before. I had noticed that there were oyster shells washed up on shore, but when I asked the workers who repair the pier if they had ever seen an oyster attached to the pier, they said no. This is a huge find because there are currently only a few places in New York City where oysters have actually been documented.

I also found an oyster attached to the pier piling. Next time I go to LaGuardia, I'm going to try to go during a negative tide so that I can explore a little more to see how many oysters there actually are.

I brought the spat collectors back to the office so that I would have time to sort through them and look at all of the organisms that had hitched a ride. This is a mud crab. As you can see it is aptly named because it is covered in mud. It also has one claw that is bigger than the other. I'm guessing that this is a black fingered mud crab. They are predators of young bivalves, such as oysters and can crush shells that are less than 0.5 inches.

This is some kind of marine worm. I need to do more research because I don't know what it is but it looks very similar to an earth worm. I've found it in every spat collector so far.

Here is a close up of the sea grapes. They are filter feeders and suck in water though one siphon and their wastes out the other. You can see the two siphons on the sea grape to the left. You can also see their internal organs through their clear bodies. Tunicates are actually our closest invertebrate relatives. In their larval form they posess a notocord but lose it once the develop into adults.

There were also four eel-like fish that were unfortunately hiding in the spat collectors that I think are actually American eel. My next post is going to be devoted to them because they are a species of concern because it is disappearing at a rapid rate due to overfishing, habitat loss, pollution and blocked migration routes.

I had found a few of these eels in the spat collectors before but the pictures that I had taken of them were terrible because the office camera can't take pictures up close. I had thought that these eels were actually conger eels, but these eels short noses make that impossible.

Here is a beautiful pink-pigmented amphipod. :)

A barnacle. Fun Fact: They are actually crustaceans. 

Sea anenome. 

That's all the organisms for now! Hopefully we'll find some spat next time. :)

New York Oysters on WNYC

Here's an informative talk on the oyster reef restoration efforts in New York City on the Brian Lehrer Show featuring Mark Kurlansky, author of the Big Oyster, and Professor Jeffrey Levinton from Stonybrook University.

Long Island Lobster Fishing: Another Example of Overfishing and Environmental Degradation

This article in the NY Times about lobster fishing in Long Island reminded me of the lobster overfishing in the Dominican Republic. However, the situation is even more complex because the lobster population is decreasing it is thought due to climate change and the flusihg of pesticides released into the water to kill mosquitoes. There is also a bacterial invasion that causes deformities, which reduces the lobster's marketability.

New Title: Oyster Reef Restoration Assistant

So... long time no write. I have been busy working at the New York City Parks and Recreation Department, the Natural Resources Group as the Oyster Reef Restoration Assistant and during my spare time I have been looking for jobs and having fun in the city. : ) It is a six month long position and the grant ends this year, but at least I get to stay in New York City for the summer and fall and who knows, maybe it will open up new opportunities because NewYork City is planning to restore 500 acres of oyster reefs by 2015 and 5,000 by 2050. There is a significant amount of research that needs to be done before oyster reef restoration goals can be met. Currently there is less than one acre of restored oyster reefs when all of the reefs are combined.

There are too many organizations to mention that are involved in oyster restoration in the New York Harbor so I will only focus on the main players. Oyster reef restoration is one of the components of the Comprehensive Restoration Plan, which was a collaboration led by the USACE (US Army Corp of Engineers) and the NY/NJ Harbor Estuary Program, established in the 1980s when the Hudson estuary was designated an estuary of national importance to coordinate restoration activities in the estuary. Oyster reef restoration was also mentioned as one of the components of PlaNYC 2030 and Vision 2020: NYC Comprehensive Waterfront Plan. The ORRP was formed in order to coordinate oyster restoration efforts among multiple organizations and to devise a plan to implement the large scale oyster reef restoration project I previously mentioned (5,000 acres by 2050). NY/NJ Baykeeper was charged with constructing five experimental small scale oyster reefs last fall and to organize the monitoring for this project to determine growth and survival of the oysters and the reefs effect on the estuary's biodiversity and water quality. One of the experimental oysters reefs was one of NRG's reefs that was constructed in 2006 but had subsided into the sediment due to low recruitment and high levels of sedimentation. Baykeeper added clam shell and 50,000 spat on shell that were raised with the help of high school students at the NY Harbor School located on Governor's Island. Part of my job is to serve as the liason between Baykeeper and NRG to help coordinate monitoring events and to assist with communication and data-sharing between organizations.

The other part of my job is to help close out the Shellfish Restoration Grant funded by the WCS-NOAA Jose. E. Serrano Lower Bronx River Partnership. NRG has been involved in oyster restoration work with this granting organization since 2006. I developed a monitoring protocol for the reef constructed in 2007, organized monitoring events, drafted progress and final reports, and analyze data. The two organizations that have been helping me with my monitoring are Rocking the Boat, an organization that teaches high school students environmental restoration and boat-building, and the Bronx River Alliance, which conducts environmental restoration along the Bronx River.

New Fulton Fish Market

A few weeks ago I went with Thomas to the New Fulton Fish Market at on a quest for live snails and crayfish  for my aquaponics system. : ) We got on the bus at around 4:30 in the morning and got there by 6 and already most of the fish was gone! The market is from 1-7 in the morning and the peak time is around 4. As you can see from the picture below, it wasn't very crowded but they have pedestrian walkways that line the fish vendors and the center remains free for the forklifts and other vehicles to pass through.

The New Fulton Fish Market is located on Food Center Drive in the lower Bronx. It used to be located on Fulton Ave. in lower Manhattan where it had been since 1807. Up to 5% of the fish consumed in the US moves through the market and has the largest consortium of wholesalers in the US. (This is why I thought it would be worth while to check out if they had snails and crayfish). Restaurant and supermarket owners come to the market daily to pick out fish. However, the market moved because the rent was high and the fish were exposed to the elements so in 2005, it moved to its current location where the temperature of the warehouse is controlled to make sure that the fish doesn't spoil and it is very sanitary. However, the fishers say that the new location doesn't have as much character as the old location. Oh well, I guess I should have moved to NYC sooner.  

I did find some frozen spiny lobster tails! Sadly no live ones, but we did see some live Maine lobsters though, which is to be expected.

These ones are from Brazil!

There were some interesting fish there. I don't know what species of fish these two are!

 I definitely want to come to the market during it's peak time to see all of the activity and the fish. : )