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How Did Humpback Whales End Up in New York Harbour? · How To Protect The Ocean

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  Picture the West Side of Manhattan in the 1970s.
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  The riverfront smells god-awful.
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  Nobody walks there.
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  Every toilet that flushes on that side of the island goes straight
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  into the Hudson untreated.
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  Absolutely disgusting.
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  It had been that way for generations.
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  Now fast-forward to this summer, and people are boarding whale watch boats in
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  Brooklyn and seeing humpback whales in the harbor or just outside What almost
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  nobody talks about is how this happened and how long it took, and that's what
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  we're gonna talk about on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
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  I am trying out a new microphone, but an old microphone at the same time.
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  This is the, uh, first, like, professional microphone that I
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  went to, after I really started.
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  and so I wanna just check to see if there's a difference in here
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  'cause I've been having trouble with the other microphone.
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  I would love to hear if you notice a difference.
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  If not, that's cool, but if you wanna let me know, my socials are in the show notes.
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  and by the way, if you don't know who I am and this is your first time here,
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  this is How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
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  I am your host, Andrew Lewin.
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  I am a marine biologist, a science communicator, and the oceans
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  communications manager for a consulting firm called Pisces Oceans based in Canada.
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  We work with ocean projects to help them succeed so they can have
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  a greater impact on the ocean.
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  So let's talk about pollution in general.
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  Yesterday's episode, I spoke to Dr. Judith Weis, who is a retired professor
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  from Rutgers University, and she was talking about the second edition of her
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  marine pollution book, which by the way, she was my first interview, that I ever
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  published on how to protect the ocean.
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  And now she is another interview on the second edition of Marine Pollution on
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  this How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
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  And we are here to talk about marine pollution because, there are some
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  things that have changed over that time, and we wanted to kinda do
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  that, but 2,000 episodes later.
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  So it's kind of fun to be able to do this.
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  But the whole point of this episode today is to kinda look at the feeling that you
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  might carry on if you see pollution in the waterways, whether it's freshwater,
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  whether it's marine, it doesn't matter.
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  it can really be difficult to say, "Hey, are we ever gonna get to a
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  point where this becomes easier?
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  Where we can actually have clean water?" And that's not always the case.
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  It can be really hard because of the fight that you have to go through to
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  make sure you get clean water, which to be honest, is a bit of an oxymoron.
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  We should always have clean water.
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  We should always have a nice coastline, just, a nice harbor.
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  But sometimes just historical stuff has really gone on and,
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  really gone off the rails.
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  Like I live right beside Hamilton Harbour here in Ontario, off the
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  Great Lakes, off the Lake Ontario.
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  And I look at the Hamilton Harbour and, the water itself is pretty clean.
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  I wouldn't necessarily recommend people go swimming in it, people
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  fish in it for all the time.
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  But also like the bottom, the sediment in the bottom has historical
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  like, PAH, there's like some really nasty chemicals in there.
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  And it would take trillions of dollars just to clean that up.
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  I'm estimating here, but just to clean all that sediment up
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  and dispose of it properly.
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  So what they do is they just don't touch that part of, the harbor.
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  They don't touch the sediment.
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  If they do, they're very careful, and when they have to dredge it, 'cause
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  there's a lot of boats that come in Hamilton Harbor, 'cause it is a major
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  port in Lake Ontario, and they have to make sure that they are being very clean
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  and, making sure that, the spread of sediment when you bring it up and you
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  dredge doesn't go everywhere, so they have to have curtains and all this kind
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  of stuff, make sure there's no currents.
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  It's a really tricky process.
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  They have to go through an environmental assessment every time they do
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  it, and there's heavy monitoring.
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  I used to do that monitoring while I was working as a private consultant.
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  we know that Hamilton Harbor has gotten better, but it also has kinda
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  stayed the same in the same way.
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  And so it's, difficult to watch that happen, where we are looking at how,
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  untreated sewage and chemicals that have gone on historically for decades,
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  now, that can't happen anymore.
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  It hadn't happened for a long time, but it's still a problem.
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  And so to make sure that we move forward with this, like we move forward
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  with cleanliness and making sure our water quality is clean, we have to
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  start looking historically at what has been done in the past so that
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  we can continue that in the future.
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  And New York Harbor is a huge, piece here, a, great conservation story when
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  we look at bringing back the harbor and bringing back good water quality to the
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  point where we bring back the menhaden, which used to be there in huge droves,
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  used to be a very big fishing port.
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  The menhaden that, shows off that it's healthy seas, and the humpback whales
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  that come back to feed on the menhaden.
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  So once you start bringing those fish back, once you get the water quality in
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  a good condition, the healthy ecosystem comes back to life, and you start seeing
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  the animals come back, and that's really great to see Now, let's go back and
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  let's start to look at what caused all of this historically bad water quality,
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  let's go back to between the 1800s and the 1960s to look at that cause.
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  New York City grew faster than anyone had ever planned for, and the sewers
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  were built to flush the waste right into the Hudson River, the East River,
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  and the harbor itself, because moving water was supposed to carry it away.
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  So the idea is that once you put it in the ocean, it gets diluted
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  across that big water body, and it goes out from the harbor.
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  And by the early 1900s, roughly 590 million gallons of raw sewage
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  a day were pouring into the harbor.
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  As early as 1886, the city installed floating screens at Coney Island to keep
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  the sewage away from swimmers, 'cause Coney Island was a huge place for people
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  to just kinda hang out on the beach and enjoy the Atlantic Ocean, enjoy
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  the weather in the summers when it gets really, really hot, and have a good time.
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  But you can't have a good time if the water's green or if the water smells.
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  This is absolutely disgusting.
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  Nobody's gonna go in there.
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  They're gonna get sick.
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  So they had these screens to keep the sewage away from the swimmers.
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  Now, by early 20th century, the city's own environmental agency says
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  the harbor had lost the ability to support wildlife and recreation.
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  So that's early 20th century.
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  That means early 1900s.
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  And treatment plants started going up in the 1930s, but the West Side
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  of Manhattan didn't have any, Every flush from Bank Street to Inwood
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  went into the Hudson untreated.
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  Like, think about that, that smell, that empty waterfront
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  that nobody wants to go near.
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  the screens at the beach.
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  Like, that's gotta be full of just literally crap . Like, that's
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  really what it comes down to.
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  And, the sewage system that everybody had to inherit is not necessarily,
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  like, the fault of anybody.
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  It's not the fault of New Yorkers.
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  It's just the s- way the system was built.
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  And so there was a, critical point where New Yorkers had to decide what they
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  wanted to do with this system, Now, in comes up what led to this cleanup.
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  So now between 1906 and 1972, there started to be a
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  little bit more of an outcry.
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  So the public outcry it came pretty early.
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  In 1909, the city began testing the harbor water because
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  people demanded it pretty much.
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  And that, the survey still runs today.
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  So the fact is, people started to smell the area, the river sucked.
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  It was just gross.
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  Nobody wants to be around that.
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  It can't be healthy for you, even for back then where they probably didn't have
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  the testing to be able to say, "Hey, this is healthy or this isn't healthy from
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  terms of an air quality perspective." But it can't be that healthy.
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  But the real turn came from regular people,
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  it's the people who actually stood up.
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  In 1966, a group of Hudson River fishermen met in an American Legion
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  hall in Crotonville, New York.
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  They dug up a forgotten 1899 law that paid a bounty to anyone who reported
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  a polluter, and they started using it.
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  Think about that, going back 18, to 1899 law where they said, "Hey, we're
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  gonna start giving out, these prizes for people who snitched on Heathers."
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  Like, it was the bounty hunters of the past.
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  And it started to be used, and they started to win, That
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  group became the Riverkeeper.
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  It's a model for over 300 waterkeeping organizations worldwide.
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  And then six years later in 1972, Congress passed the Clean Water Act,
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  which required real treatment and sent federal money to build that treatment.
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  So imagine this, ordinary people who fished in the area
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  realized that the water stank.
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  Other people also realized that the water stank.
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  The fishermen got together and said, "Hey, we need to have a system where we can
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  use the old law of the bounties and start to, snitch on people who are polluting."
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  on all these different factories and all these different areas where
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  we know that there's stuff coming out, whether it's chemicals, whether
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  it's raw sewage, it doesn't matter.
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  And it started to work, and then the Clean Water Act came in 60
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  years later, and they said, " now we got real treatment coming in.
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  So now we're putting in real treatment plants to the point
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  where every river is going to be better." So that's when it started.
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  So from like 1938 to today, we started to see this type of change.
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  The North River plant on Manhattan's West Side was first proposed in 1938.
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  It opened in March 1986, nearly 50 years later, so I don't know
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  what happened between that.
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  But the city's own records calls that moment the first time in New
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  York's history that daily raw sewage stopped flowing into the Hudson.
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  Even into the 1980s, Manhattan was still discharging around 200 million
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  gallons of untreated sewage a day.
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  And the work didn't stop in 1986.
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  Like the city now runs 14 treatment plants, has spent more than $4 billion on
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  overflow control and has put another $1.2 billion in removing nitrogen since 2002.
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  So sewer outflows capture went from about 30% in 1980 to over 80% to now.
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  The North River plant ended up in West Harlem after wealthier neighborhoods
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  blocked an earlier site farther south.
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  And residents dealt with odors for years.
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  In 1988, seven protesters called the Sewage Seven were arrested
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  blocking the West Side Highway,
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  that fight gave birth to the WE Act, for environmental justice.
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  Riverbank State Park was later built on top of that plant
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  So this is a point where we realize that standing up for what you want,
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  standing up for what's needed for clean water was actually pushing forward.
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  Because it made sense for a lot of people.
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  They're like, "Hey, wait a minute.
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  Why can't all New Yorkers have clean water?
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  Why can't we have these plants put in even if the rich, you know, block
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  these areas?" Sure, some of these plants when you go by them, they stink.
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  It's sewage water.
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  We all have it.
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  We all have it in our cities.
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  It's never good to smell.
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  But the fact is that we have clean water going back into our waters.
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  Again, here in Burlington where I live, the sewage plant, puts out the sewage
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  treatment all the way out, like two kilometers out into the Great Lakes.
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  But it has to be at a certain point, like the levels have to be at a certain point,
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  because if it doesn't, it's gonna just cause more and more pollution as we hear.
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  And we get our source water, like we get our drinking water from Lake Ontario.
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  So it's not a fact that this is a choice.
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  This is a fact that we need to have clean drinking water, whether you live
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  in New York City, whether you live in Burlington, Ontario, it doesn't matter.
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  You need to have clean water, not only for drinking water, but for
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  other purposes, and making sure that you have a healthy system.
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  Now going back to New York City, since 1992, bacteria levels in the
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  harbor have stayed well below the standard for swimming in dry weather.
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  Oxygen hit record highs in the city's 2017 report, and the Hudson Riverfront
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  that nobody wanted became a walkway for people use every single day.
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  When the whales came between 2011 and 2013, researchers logged one humpback
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  sighting in the harbor estuary.
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  between 2014 and 2016, they logged 45.
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  As of this summer, Gotham Whale has identified 500 individual humpbacks
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  in New York waters with 80 to 100 new ones showing up every single year.
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  The whales are not coming if the water is crappy.
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  The whales are not coming if there's not food.
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  The fact that in 2012, like catch limits on menhaden were put
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  in, the small fish that whales chase, that let the fish rebound.
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  And having the greater water quality in there allowed for the whales
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  to come back to be like, "Hey, we found some great food source.
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  We found a great food source and we're on the Atlantic.
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  We have to go up to north.
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  So on our way, we're going to stop off and we're gonna enjoy this wonderful
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  menhaden food." because those were the indicators of a healthy ecosystem.
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  We see the menhaden come back and the whales come back.
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  And it also allowed for whale watching companies to start playing.
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  Gotham Whale it's a very popular whale watching company I think that runs out
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  of Brooklyn, and they started to be like, "Hey, like we have all these whales here.
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  Come look at the whales in New York Harbor.
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  Come look at it just beyond New York Harbor.
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  You'll be able to see these humpback whales at specific times of years
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  when they come in," because it's so clean, because New Yorkers can
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  enjoy not only the benefits of a big city, but also the benefits
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  of a clean ocean, and that's huge.
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  Now New York City is still not out of the woods, Heavy rain still overflows
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  the old combined pipes through about 700 outfalls, around 20 billion gallons a
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  year by one advocacy's group estimate.
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  So it is still a situation where we need to make sure that area gets a
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  treatment plant, And the water isn't necessarily open for regular swimming yet.
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  So you still have to know that there are things that we need to do in New York
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  City to make sure that this can get back to, regular swimming, where it's healthy
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  enough that we can do regular swimming.
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  But the thing is, when you look at the entire history of it that we went through
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  So sewage became treated, from the pipes because you were able to point to that.
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  You were able to measure what the water quality was like
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  at the end of these pipes.
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  So the treatment plants went in, the pipes were there.
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  We knew we could measure, we can monitor, we can make sure that
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  they're doing everything properly.
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  That is huge.
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  That is really great to see.
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  Now, later in the week, we're gonna look at pollution that doesn't come from a
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  pipe at all and what the ramifications are and how that is taken care of.
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  But the big thing for you to realize that If you're in New York City, you can
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  be part of a Waterkeeper organization.
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  If you go to waterkeeper.org, it has a map, and you can sign up
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  for their water quality alert.
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  So you can see what's going on in your area or across New York City,
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  And, like, this ties right back to those, fishermen that, met and became, like, the
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  Riverkeepers, the Waterkeepers, in 1966.
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  The Harbor Cleaners started with people who watched their water and spoke up.
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  Whether they're fishermen, whether they're New Yorkers or both, they got to see
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  what is gonna happen with their water quality and how much better it's getting.
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  And then now they get to make sure that it stays okay and gets better in the future.
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  And that is huge when you're looking at a major city that
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  had such awful water quality.
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  Seeing a humpback surfacing in New York Harbor with a Manhattan skyline
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  behind it, like, are you kidding me?
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  In water that was an open sewer within, like, the living
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  memory of most New Yorkers.
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  This took decades.
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  It cost a lot of money, but it worked.
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  And it goes to show that if you speak up for your ocean, you can get things done.
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  It's not easy, and you need a community to do it, but there's
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  enough communities within New York City that they got this done.
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  And I think it's a really great story to discuss with your peers, with your
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  family, to say, "Hey, you know what?
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  If we ever see bad quality like we're seeing in Florida or we're seeing in
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  other places, we know that we can stop it.
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  We just have to speak up to the government to say, 'Hey, you know what?
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  This has to be the end of this.
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  We need to make sure that we are going to continue, and be better and make
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  sure that our water quality is good.'" So this is a great example of that.
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  The results have been amazing.
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  Manta ray coming back, humpback whales coming back.
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  Seeing the ability of starting new businesses within a New York Harbor
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  for Gotham Whale, and people can go whale watching in the harbor.
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  It's absolutely phenomenal, and the people of New York City should be very
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  proud of what they have been able to do.
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  So I wanna thank you so much for listening to this.
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  I would love to hear your thoughts on it.
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  If you're a New Yorker or you've had a family hi- in New York.
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  I would love to hear your thoughts about the cleanliness of the harbor
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  or even like a first, person account of how that's been, for you as
• 15:48
  you grew up in, New York City.
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  So I'd love to hear your thoughts.
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  If you are on Spotify, you're listening to this on Spotify,
• 15:54
  there's a comment section.
• 15:55
  Hit me up with a comment.
• 15:56
  I would love to hear what your thoughts are on this episode.
• 15:59
  And of course, if you are listening to this on any other, app and you don't
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  have access to comments, just hit me up like DM me or hit me up on LinkedIn.
• 16:06
  all my socials are in the show notes, so you can check that out.
• 16:09
  I wanna thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the
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  How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
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  I'm your host, Andrew Lewin.
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  Have a great day.
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  We'll talk to you next time, and happy conservation.