underwater
plant varieties. According to the New York State Department of Environmental
Conservation or the NYSDEC, Habitats like these produce over 75% of the
commercially and recreationally important finfish and shellfish species
in the world.
New York has many different types of marine habitats,
such as estuaries, mud and sandflats, natural and artificial reefs, and
tidal wetlands, each of which supports a variety or marine life including
hundreds of species of fish, clams, mussels, and underwater
plant varieties. According to the New York State Department of Environmental
Conservation or the NYSDEC, Habitats like these produce over 75% of the
commercially and recreationally important finfish and shellfish species
in the world.
Pollution like these syringes that washed up on the shores of New Jersey, thought to have washed up from the New York City streets and sewer systems are indeed a problem, but there are forms of pollution that more directly affect us as New York City dwellers. For example, contaminated shellfish are a real problem in New York. Shellfish pump water around their bodies to obtain oxygen and filter out tiny plants and animals for food. This makes it easy for shellfish that live in contaminated water to pick up disease causing bacteria.
This may sound like a minor problem, but it can
cause major issues. For example, In the early 1920's an outbreak of typhoid
fever, caused by contaminated shellfish from New York waters, infected
more than a thousand people in Washington D.C., Chicago and New York. The
disease killed at least 150 people.
In order to protect consumers from this, the Department of Health and NYSDEC work to test water regularly, and inform commercial harvesters of area closings. Today, approximately 200,000 acres, about 17% of the state's total growing waters, are closed to harvesting because sampling shows the waters are not clean enough. Since these procedures were introduced, there have been similar, but much smaller-scale outbreaks. The two most prominent instances in New York State occurred in ’61 and ’82, and involved shellfish infected with an intestinal virus. No deaths were reported in these instances.
Much of the fishing of New York City takes place in the Hudson River. Shellfish are only one part of a large and varied fishing industry.
One type of fish particularly common to the Hudson River is the American
Shad. Hudson River adults average 20 to 23 inches in length and five to
six pounds in weight. Up until the 20’s, shad were also common as far upstream
of the Susquehana River as Binghamton, but large hydropower dams currently
block the shad run from reaching that area.
Another common fish in the New York City Hudson
River area is the Ocean-Run Alewife. Adults average ten to 14 inche
s
in length and weigh less than a pound. They are harder to fish though,
as they are more difficult to find than the shad. They hide in weedy beds
and deep water during the day, and as fall approaches, they tend to migrate
out to the ocean. A large run of Alewives occurs in the Hudson River and
its tributaries each spring, making that the ideal time to harvest them.
Blueback herring are found all along the eastern
Atlantic Ocean from Nova Scotia to Florida, and are an important commercial
fish all along the Atlantic coast. Their route takes them directly past
New York City via the Hudson. They are the last run of herring to pass
through the Hudson river in the herring season, arriving in mid-May and
June.
Scientists are as yet unaware of the exact number of species of marine life in the world, or even any given area today, however they do know that the number is enormous. According to the first world-wide census of marine life, up to 5,000 previously unknown fish species, and hundreds of thousands of other types of marine life will be identified by the time the census ends in 2010.
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