The River and Its Reserve
by Cynthia Owen Philip

The other day I suddenly realized that, although I had been writing about the history of the Hudson River and its waterfront communities for a very long time, I knew little about the river itself. I thought the Research Reserve at Norrie Point might have answers. It did and much more. My visits there have opened my eyes to a spellbinding new world of seemingly limitless possibilities.

The New York State Department of Conservation’s Research Reserve has deep roots. One might claim they reach back to Henry David Thoreau’s famous nature musings, but its official underpinning is the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899. Enlightened public and private environmentalists slogged on through the years, but it was not until 1972, with the passage of the Clean Water Act, that the movement got teeth. Ten years later, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration set up a nationwide system of Research Reserves to protect the nation’s coastline and tidal estuaries. Implementation was put into the hands of state conservation departments, with start-up funding provided.

The state’s conservation department was quick to establish the Hudson River National Estuarine Research Reserve—or simply the Reserve, as I’ll call it for this article. Its territory consists of four wetlands spanning 100 miles along the banks of the river: Piermont Marsh, not far below Nyack; Iona Island south of West Point; Tivoli North and South Bays on the northern boundary of Dutchess County; and the Stockport Flats, just above the city of Hudson. Including the riparian uplands, these wetlands comprise nearly 5,000 acres. The Reserve’s broad mission is to protect, research and restore them, with the goal of achieving a natural balance among the vegetation, animals and human activity in each.

This is not an easy job. No two of the four sites are alike. Differences in the saline levels at each site, for instance, are the critical factor in determining what range of animal and plant species are naturally sustainable in each. At Piermont Marsh the river is salty, at Iona Island it is brackish, while the waters at Tivoli Bays and Stockport Flats are fresh. Although both the Bays and the Flats are heavily marked by human intervention, they also differ radically. Tivoli Bays was cut off from the free flow of the river in mid-19th century by the strip of fill created to carry the railroad that tied New York City to Chicago. An important section of Stockport Flats was created from dredgings; in addition, the most complete remains of a 19th century icehouse on the Hudson reminds visitors of the important role the river’s ice harvesting industry played in the freshwater Hudson before the invention of refrigerators.

Tivoli Bays
All four sites support such a rich variety of ecological elements that they are living laboratories for the Reserve. Because Tivoli North and South Bays are close by, I will confine much of this article to describing the Reserve’s accomplishments there. Moreover the Bays, with their fresh water, provide habitat for important species such as the American eel that hatches in salt water and reaches sexual maturity in fresh.

Although the fill supporting the railroad is pierced in several places with arches that allow water, animals, plants, and, as the tide lowers, small boats to pass in and out, the volume of water is nowhere as great as it was before it was built. As a result the South Bay, once the location of a beach to which large schooners were brought to have their bottoms scraped, has become a tidal marsh. Today it is filled with water chestnuts, an alien invasive species, and large segments of dead trees. It is so shallow that in winter it freezes long before the river, a boon to skaters and ice boaters. The Tivoli North Bay is now a marshland with wending water courses and mudflats that are exposed at low tide.

Stony Creek, with its 22.2 square mile watershed, drains into the North Bay. The Saw Kill, historic because it is believed to have inspired the romantic landscape movement, has a similarly-sized 22.0-square mile watershed, which drains into South Bay. Extensive uplands border both bays. From them rise small local water courses that add water to the bays at least intermittently, and more important, increase their already wide variety of habitat. Two bedrock islands, Magdalen and Cruger’s, lie on the river side of the railroad tracks at North Bay. Both contain uplands and tidal swamp habitats. Native American use of them has been set as far back as 7,000 years. The islands are now protected sites.

Walking trails open to the public span the site. The Reserve maintains a public canoe and kayak launch on the North Bay, which it also uses as a point of departure for its free educational canoe excursions. In addition, the Tivoli Bays Visitor Center, created and maintained by the Reserve and housed in the Tivoli Village Hall, exhibits tangible examples of the flora, fauna and archeological remains from the area. It explains their import through enlarged photographs and well-written descriptive panels. Its collection of reading material is an extension of the Tivoli Free Library across the hall. Wild Wednesdays, an after-school program for young children and adults, featuring animals they can touch and even hold, is another collaboration between the Center and the Library. On the first Thursday evening of every month except January, the Reserve sponsors an always well-attended lecture at the Center on some aspect of the river or its countryside.

The American Eel Project
Beginning in March and continuing through May, juvenile eels, called “glass eels” because they are transparent, arrive in the Hudson from the Caribbean in search of fresh water habitats where they will stay for years—some say a decade or more—until they are ready to procreate. They then swim back to the southern salt waters where they were hatched—generally believed to be the plant-matted Sargasso Sea, though no one has yet reported seeing either an egg or a hatch.

For a very long time eels were a vital part of our region’s economy. Native Americans fished for eels by building weirs and Dutchmen trapped them in the same fyke nets they had used in their homeland: a long tapered cylinder ending in a trap pulled through the water by a wide bow. In living memory, men and boys in communities along the river used similar nets, or caught them on a hook—a sporting proposition since it required a special two-fingered grip to dislodge the hook. One of my friends, an experienced amateur naturalist, vividly remembers seeing a mass of young eels, numbering perhaps in the thousands, scrambling over the earth to get around one of the falls on the Saw Kill. It is not surprising few noticed the population was dwindling. In the 1990s, it was found that eel flesh contained PCBs and other contaminants. Their sale was made illegal and a warning was put out about eating them. Fishing for eels became a pastime for diehards.

At the same time, the research community became concerned about how the decline of the eel population might affect the balance in the river’s ecology. To find out, they needed a base line against which to measure deviations. Chris Bowser at the Reserve began the long term project of catching, weighing and releasing glass eels in order to establish one.

Since then, the project has expanded to include students and individual volunteers, part of the Reserve’s outreach to expand the public’s awareness by engaging it in productive, hands-on work. Guided by Reserve staff, they catch, weigh and release “glass eels” in the spring, still using historic fyke nets. They also use eel mops—a bunch of shaggy rope attached to a stick that deceives juvenile eels into believing it is a protective habitat. To ensure uniformity of information across all sites, the volunteers also fill out forms recording the circumstances surrounding the catch, such as weather and tidal conditions, stream flow, and other animals caught.

The expanded program’s first, tentative findings are: 1) more eels were caught in 2009 than in 2008, and 2) peaks in the eel population appear to be related both to new and full moons and to the amount of recent precipitation.The project itself is a work in progress for the Reserve staff, and they are always trying to improve it by asking for feedback from participants, whom they regard as stakeholders. As a result, several college students have switched their majors to prepare for work in the field, and the band of able, experienced data collectors is steadily growing.

Zebra Mussels
Zebra mussels have been a scourge to the Hudson River’s ecological balance for over a decade, when they first arrived on ship bottoms and in their ballast. Multiplying swiftly, this invasive species immediately started to create havoc in the river. They are such efficient filter feeders that they can reduce the river’s plankton by 80 per cent in places where they congregate, rendering that spot “dead.” They then move on to a fresh area and devastate it. Underwater plants that thrive when more sunlight gets to them may benefit, but overall the mussels throw the river’s ecological balance out of kilter. Recently however Dave Strayer, the zebra mussel expert at the Carey Institute of Ecosystems, reported some tentative good news: that the average size of the mussels is getting smaller. Why, he can only guess. He also reports that the zooplankton on which they feed seems to be coming back. But he can claim neither of these as necessarily continuing trends.

The Move to Norrie Point
By 2007, the Reserve realized its programs were growing at a pace that required more space than was available at the Field Station next to the Saw Kill on the Bard College campus, where they had been working. They also needed a location that offered easier access, since in addition to continuing scientific work, the wave of the future meant outreach to student and community groups. Good luck could not have shone more brightly on its desire to move. A handsome, roomy stone-block building smack on the waterfront at Norrie Point was available. A product of Roosevelt Administration’s CCC program, it is now a registered historic landmark. Its breathtaking views are inspirational, its coves ideal for student projects, and it possesses a fine dock. Moreover, it is midway between the four sites that already offer so much to the public.

To this property the Reserve brought a staff with years of experience, trusted contacts in river-oriented organizations and an impressive connection with specialists in almost every ecological discipline. It is not surprising that one of its first actions was to spur the establishment of a special network called the Hudson River Environmental Conditions Observing System, or HRECOS for short. Besides the Reserve, its members include the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Carey Institute of Ecosystem Studies, the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (a part of Columbia University), the Stevens Institute, and the state DEC, acting in large part through the Reserve. Each contributes its special skills. Each benefits according to its needs. By institutionalizing expertise and information sharing among such a stellar consortium of public and private research organizations, the entire research community wins.

With the help of the Stevens Institute’s Center for Maritime Systems, which took on responsibility for retrieval and dissemination of data, for instance, seven permanent, continuous systems for monitoring water and atmospheric quality have been set up, three of them in our area: Tivoli Bays North, Tivoli Bays South and Norrie Point. All take measurements automatically at 15-minute intervals: the river’s turbidity, salinity and pH, as well as levels of chlorophyll and oxygen; atmospheric data includes precipitation, barometric pressure, relative humidity, air temperature and active radiation. The record is relayed via satellite and internet to the public at large at one hour intervals along with forecasts. Anyone with access to internet can download them and print them out.

This constitutes a stunning leap forward in collecting and broadcasting data about the river. Recreational as well as commercial boaters and fishermen benefit from knowing what water and weather conditions to expect, from a calm, sunny day to storms and flooding. The reporting on tides is far more accurate than that commonly available, because it is not based on phases of the moon, but on real-time instruments. Public officials use the data to detect such events as sewer overflows, oil spills and disturbances caused by dredging. The scientific community uses it to build its baselines and for such overarching studies as the interaction between aquatic and atmospheric systems. Every aspect of the accumulated data will be invaluable in deciding how to prepare for climate change.

Yet Another Invasive Species
Meanwhile, another invasive species has entered our waters: the Chinese Mitten Crab, so called because it comes from China (where crabs are a gastronomic delicacy) and has “fur” on its claws. Specimens were first noted in our waters in 2007. Like zebra mussels, the mitten crabs multiply at lightning speed, and they have even more aggressive migration patterns. Unlike the mussels, they prosper in low oxygen environments. They can exist on land for long periods, limited only by the need for fresh water. They bore tunnels in shorelines, threatening serious erosion. They are voracious; the only good thing about them is that they seem to have strong predilection for zebra mussels. They are also proving difficult to study, as they are so elusive they are hard to find, and so agile they are almost impossible to trap. Few have been caught alive. The best evidence that their numbers are increasing here are molted shells, many of which have been found in the Saw Kill. So far their only vulnerability turned up one day when Norrie Point’s demonstration Chinese crab shed its shell and the two blue crabs that shared the aquarium attacked its soft flesh, tearing it to pieces. Needless to say, Reserve scientists are on the case.

The Miraculous River World
Last week I was traveling to New York City by train. I had secured a window seat on the river side as I always try to do, for I love to observe the changing scenery as it rolls by. That day I realized something different had happened. A whole new dimension had been added. I was not only enjoying the rippling river and the multi-hued mountains and the fascinating clouds, but, in my mind, I could see beneath the surface of the water all the animals, plants, sediments I had just learned of. For me, it has been a life changing experience. Through the Reserve’s many programs and its multi-faceted sites, this miraculous world can be yours, too.

Norrie Point Research Reserve (HRNERR)
845-889-4745
www.dec.ny.gov/lands/4915.html

Free Public Canoe Program Schedule for 2010
www.dec.ny.gov/public/33037.html#Canoe

Public Fishing and Boating Maps
www.dec.ny.gov/lands/41728.html

Current weather, tide and water quality data (NYHOPS)
http://hudson.dl.stevens-tech.edu/maritimeforecast

Tivoli Bays Visitor Center
Village Clerk 845-757-2021
Library 845-757-3771

HRECOS
www.hrecos.org/joomla