Earning Credit for Boat-Building and Sailing

Recent New York Times article features Rocking the Boat and other non-profits that engage students in meaningful hands-on learning activities after-school that build real-world skills and experience while often earning them course credit at the same time:

Hudson River Community Sailing developed its curriculum with the help of a certified teacher. For math credit in the spring, the students calculate things like the time it takes for a boat to travel a certain distance, given wind and current speed. Over the winter, students built 9-foot sailboats out of marine grade-plywood, an exercise in engineering that can carry science credit.

Different principals award different amounts of credit for the course, and they also determine whether the class is graded or pass/fail. Trevor Naidoo, the principal of Landmark High School in Chelsea, said he offered his students “mostly physical education credit” for the Hudson River Community sailing program, which runs for about six hours a week after school.

Tour the Bronx River! From your computer.

For those people who are curious about what the Bronx River is like as it winds from Muskrat Cove near Yonkers to Soundview Park where it empties into the Sound, check out this AMAZING virtual tour on the New York City Department of Parks website. The map and photos are great, but the best part are the interviews with the individuals who are working each in their own way to better the Bronx River. From an artist who dreams of a sculpture park in an abandoned park, to teachers conducting water quality tests with students, to a woman untangling the legal mess of who is responsible for the river to get cleanup efforts underway, these interviews tell a fascinating and powerful tale of how individuals are making a difference in their communities.

Fish of the Week: Alewife Herring

Alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus)

Quoting from information from the Bronx River Alliance:

Here in the Bronx River the silvery alewife is an important part of the river’s ecosystem. It is a major food source for bluefish and striped bass, schools of which will often follow the returning alewives for many miles up estuaries and rivers. The alewife is also eaten by such spectacular birds as herons, ospreys, cormorants, and even bald eagles – and they’re healthier for them, too, since they return from the ocean with fewer toxins in their bodies than most freshwater fishes. They also feed eels, gulls, raccoons, crayfish, and turtles, and as the only known host for the freshwater mussel known as the “alewife floater,” the alewife may help reestablish this native population of filter feeders that will help clean the water.

Ranging from Newfoundland to South Carolina, the alewife is spawned in fresh or brackish water, after which both juveniles and adults return to the ocean until the next spring, when they return to the very waters in which they themselves were spawned in to begin a new round of their life cycle. A single alewife may do this for as many as seven or eight years in succession.

The alewife herring is not just a native to the Bronx River, but also the Hudson, Sound, Chesapeake Bay, and other marine estuaries from the Mid-Atlantic up to Nova Scotia. Some populations are landlocked and they are even considered an invasive pest in the Great Lakes. However the herring were once a welcome annual food source to the Native Americans and Pilgrims, until the rivers, both Hudson and Bronx, became polluted. The Bronx River has been dammed up in several places making the upstream migration for spawning impossible, and until recent environmental efforts to clean up the river, the Bronx River was practically an open sewer for waste and garbage.

However the Wildlife Conservation Society and New York City Department of Parks have been working together since 2006 to reintroduce the herring as a sort of experiment to see if a population could be sustained in the newly cleaned waters. (Previously the herring had not been seen in the Bronx River for nearly 350 years!!)

In 2009 seven herring were found to have returned to the Bronx River after a few years in marine waters. Scientists think that these fish return to their juvenile waters by following chemical markers in the water (they smell their way home!). The journey is remarkable and baffling to those of us who lose our way even with maps, street signs, and directions to our destination. The experiment proves that the fish CAN survive in the Bronx River, and not only that, they can make it to sea to mature and make it back to spawn. The problem is those pesky dams, some of which date back to colonial days when the river was used to power flour mills. Constructing "ladders" (they are more like water slides) for the fish to make it over the dams is expensive. For historic preservation reasons, I am guessing the city is reluctant to dismantle those stone dams which go back centuries.

This tiny article in the New York Daily News documents that ecologists working for the Bronx River Alliance was able to find alewife herring in the River for a second year in a row in April 2010. My question is, how has 2011 fared? Are the herring still returning? Are they able to spawn successfully in spite of the dams? How many have returned? I have just emailed a New York City Parks project manager to try to obtain more information on this. Before we celebrate the return of herring to the Bronx River, I need to ascertain that they are in fact still there. Then we need to think about how we can keep the population going and healthy.

Strolling along the Sound, Running the Bronx River

Last night my mother and I indulged in some frozen dairy treats in Larchmont. We wanted to take a walk afterwards and I offered to take my mom to Manor Park. If all that is on Wikipedia is to be believed, it is quite an historic park. The history of which I was oblivious until a few moments ago, when I perused the aforementioned web page. What I did know of Manor Park is that is is strikingly beautiful. I as introduced to this gem a few years back by some friends. My mother who has lived in Westchester County most of her life was unaware of this reclusive park that opens out onto the expanse of the Long Island Sound. Standing on rocky outcrops that overlook the Sound you can watch the cormorants and gulls, the yachts and sail boats pass by, and see all the way to the Throgs Neck Bridge. I have climbed down to the shoreline and investigated the tidal pools finding Asteroidea, mollusks, and sundry other marine life.

Last night was a perfect evening. The air was cool and clear. We watched the sky change from azure to shades of pink and violet. We lingered among the fireflies and playing children, until it was getting quite dark and a patrolman asked us to leave the park.



Today I took my water-viewing west and ran alongside the Bronx River. There exists, as natives know, a ribbon park between the the Bronx River Parkway and the Amtrak Harlem line. It extends from Bronxville to White Plains, ending at the Kensico Dam. Today I just ran the bit from Tuckahoe to Scarsdale and back. When I am in better shape I hope to run the full distance this summer.

The weather was just perfect again today. It was very pleasant running in the shade. On one side there is the constant dull roar of cars on the Parkway, on the other you have the occasional whoosh of the Amtrak trains passing by. Yet this narrow park is still pretty and home to considerable wildlife. I always spot a few egrets standing or flying low across the waters. There are usually turtles sunning themselves on the logs. Today I nearly tripped over a chipmunk who seemed very startled by my giant lumbering presence. I tasted some mulberries of both the red and white variety. In past years I have come here to collect them for jams. A friend of mine who is a jammer also has harvested the abundant Japanese knotweed, an invasive species that is crowding out the local foliage along the river in several sections.

I stopped at one of the many bridges that criss-cross the river to peak down at the water. Yes, there are fish in this shallow river. I knew I had seen them before, but I wanted to confirm that they were still there. Although I recognize them, I don't know what species they are. Any tips on what fish inhabit the Bronx River between Bronxville and Scarsdale would be greatly appreciated. I am wondering if they are stocked, because of the waterfalls and artificial barriers, I am guessing they are not anadromous fish. It also seems too far upstream for that.

I have a lot to teach myself this summer before I begin teaching Bronx River ecology to a group of high school students in the fall.