Watch the super short videos below to learn about urban wildlife in and around the water of Atlantic Basin. There's also info on how to test for some water conditions next to PortSide's ship, the MARY A. WHALEN. We have the supplies to do those water tests if your school would like to make a field trip here.

The narrator in videos about water quality and some water critters is Emma Garrison. She has a background in marine biology and is a Brooklyn native passionate about the critters who manage to live and thrive in urban environments.

While an educator at the Gowanus Canal Conservancy, Emma participated in a PortSide program exploring this marine life with the Stuyvesant High School Environmental Club.

Water Quality tests

1.   Measuring Turbidity

2.   Measuring Oxygen in the water

3.   Measuring Nitrate

Water Critters

1.   Sea Squirt

2.   Sea Squirts and a Shrimp

3.   Pacific Shore Crab

4.   Sea Squirt: You Can See its Heart and Guts

5.   Dissecting a Sea Squirt

6.   Viewing the inside of a Sea Squirt

7.   Sexual Reproduction of Sea Squirts

8.   Sea Creatures that are Eaten

9.   Isopod Related to a Cockroach

10. Polychete Worm

11. Oyster Life Span

WATER BIRDS

On Election Day, 11/6/18, we spotted a great blue heron in Atlantic Basin, Red Hook for the first time. This inspired us to start a bird list of birds we spotted here.

If you want to add to this, please send us photos of birds you see here. Bird watching is a great thing to do while you wait for the NYC Ferry!  

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has a great website to help identify birds and learn more about them. We will be adding photos and links as we grow the list below.

Waterfowl that are not ducks

• Canada Geese (a pair nests here). We are working on getting a solar-powered nest cam to watch them. Want to get involved in making that happen?
• Brant Geese, smaller, chunkier and much more shy than Canada Geese.
• Red Breasted Mergansers
• Double-crested Cormorants. They have some eccentric nest habits: they include junk like deflated balloons and rope, and will treat large pebbles like eggs.
• Coot
• Common Loon
• Great Blue Heron
• Night Heron
• Black Skimmer It is stunning to see in action at night as their beaks skim the water on dynamic flight paths
• Seagulls (several kinds; we need help identifying them)
• Common Tern

Ducks

• Black duck (which we wish they would rename since they are more chocolate brown than black)
• Bufflehead Ducks, Cute, buoyant, monogamous, punctual, small! Only here in winter.
• Gadwall duck which you can confuse with black ducks if you don't know them well or don't see them side by side.
• Mallard Duck We think this is duck mating behavior.)
• Read the story in Patch about ducks competing to use our DuckNYC duck dock. Our duck ramp also served an injured sea gull.

Non-waterfowl

Barn swallows, though not water birds, live under Pier 12 (the cruise terminal pier) and in an now-defunct drain pipe on the MARY A. WHALEN.  They arrive sometime in April (April 9 to 22 is the range we have recorded) and leave around August 22 to 24.

Have you heard of whiffling? This is a way that geese and ducks manage aerodynamics and find a way to lower altitude rapidly.  Check out this video of whiffling.

Mammals
Opossums are supposed to be nocturnal, but our crew saw one during the afternoon come out of the weed patch south of our ship, walk along the pier close to our ship, and then head in the direction of the Pier 11 shed. One of the benefits of opossums is that they are one of the few animals that eats ticks. Ticks spread Lyme disease, and Lyme-bearing ticks have arrived in NYC; so treat opossums with care and appreciation!

Raccoons. We have seen these come down the pier in a family group and singly, found a juvenile on deck and had one enter a galley porthole! These wiley, adaptable, nocturnal animals are very much on the rebound in Brooklyn and are very prevalent in Red Hook.

Insects

Cricket Sounds on the MARY WHALEN, 2018

The sounds of the Mary Whalen are more than just the ship moving in the water, and the NYC ferry idling at the dock.  The sounds include the call of gulls, the quack of ducks, and on this night, the very loud trill of a cricket.

Street litter hurts water animals!

If you throw your cigarette butts onto the street (or other litter), that flows into the harbor when it rains, and fish and ducks eat the junk, and it's bad for them. Please don't litter!