Life on a different
scale
Herrings get home in Bronx River
Bob
Kappstatter
NEW YORK Fish don't vote.
But that's okay with Rep. Jose Serrano.
The South Bronx congressman was more than
happy yesterday to meet and greet a bunch of flipping-flopping
silvery alewife herrings, which have not populated the Bronx
River since the Dutch settlers dammed it up back in the
1600s.
Serrano, among those involved in cleaning
up the once severely polluted estuary, came up with the
federal funding to begin reseeding it with the small fish
- which, it is hoped, will draw other fish and birds on
the food chain to the river.
Serrano, joined by officials from the Wildlife
Conservation Society, the Bronx River Alliance and other
organizations, tipped the first ceremonial netfull of the
12-inch herring into a bucolic stretch of the river running
through the Bronx Zoo.
Then Steve Gephard, supervising fisheries
biologist with the Connecticut Department of Environmental
Protection, and his workers opened the valve on a tank atop
a truck, giving 200 of the adult alebacks a watery slide
down a large hose into the river.
Once their eggs hatch, Gephard explained,
the fish will work their way down the river, past the industrial
wasteland alongside the Sheridan Expressway and Hunts Point
and out to sea.
Four or so years from now, they'll return
up the river, to spawn once more.
"Sense of smell - they memorize the
smell of the river," Gephard explained. "It's
a chemical identity, and the little guys memorize that odor
before they leave for the sea."
And the advantage of having aleback herring
once again in the river?
"This species is sort of like the field
mice of the river and the ocean. They are the bottom of
the food chain. So when they come in, they feed larger fish,"
said an enthusiastic Gephard. "They feed great blue
heron. They feed ospreys. Porpoises will eat them. Whales
will eat them."
Does that mean we'll see whales and porpoises
in the Bronx River any time soon?
"I wouldn't count on that. I just wouldn't
hold my breath," he responded. "What we are doing
is restoring an essential cog to the Bronx River ecosystem.
At some point in the near future, you're gonna have thousands
of these fish coming back. And others will come later."
"We're saying that we care about this
river," said John Calvelli, senior vice president for
public affairs for the WCS, which runs the zoo. "We're
saying that it's going to be clean three to five years from
now, and we're saying that we'll be here waiting for them
to come back."
"It's herring today, gefilte fish tomorrow!"
joked Serrano.
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