Brooklyn Rail October 2020/ArtSeen: Duke Riley: Welcome Back to Wasteland Fishing
“The bulk of the water in New York Harbor is oily, dirty, and germy,” Joseph Mitchell, a longtime journalist for The New Yorker, wrote in his 1950 character study of New York City’s commercial fishermen. “Men on the mud suckers, the big harbor dredges, like to say that you could bottle it and sell it for poison.” For millennia, the Upper New York Bay has been a feeding and spawning zone for dozens of species of fish—cod, flounder, sea bass, mackerel, sturgeon—but by the middle of the 20th century, Mitchell wrote, the pollution was so intense that “only germs can live” at the head of the Gowanus Canal, where chemical levels were highest.
Recent years have found cleaner waters and fish returning en masse to New York City’s harbor. With them come sea life higher on the food chain. In 2011, one environmental organization spotted five whales in the waters around New York City. Last year, their count was 377—a rise at least partially attributed to cleaner waters. Though liquid chemicals are less present in the country’s waterways overall, solid forms of pollution have set in. Since World War II, plastics have filled the waters. A 2016 study published by the World Economic Forum and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation found that by 2025, the world’s oceans will contain one ton of plastic for every three tons of fish, and by 2050 plastic will outweigh the sea life. A majority of these plastics come from un-recycled trash, which runs into the water during sewage overflows. Over time, large items can break down, but microplastics and out-gassed PVC are no less deadly to fish.
