December 5th, 2016 — When a humpback whale swam all the way to the George Washington Bridge last month, it became a brief media spectacle, with the creature’s massive tail breaching the Hudson River while skyscrapers loomed in the background.
But for some, the whale’s presence also signaled that the Hudson is slowly coming back from decades of pollution. The waterway is indeed healthier than it has been since scientists began recording its demise a century ago from sewage, street runoff and industrial pollution, all of which have been curbed substantially in recent decades.
“People need to change their perception of these waters,” said Debbie Mans, executive director of the NY/NJ Baykeeper, a clean water advocacy group. “It has taken a lot of time, but it has slowly improved.”
Most experts think the whale, nicknamed Gotham, was probably drawn up the Hudson in late November by schools of small bait fish called menhaden, or bunker, whose numbers along the Eastern Seaboard have soared in recent years.
Cleaner waters allows plankton to flourish closer to shore. That, in turn, provides a food source for fish like menhaden. And whales like nothing more than to munch on menhaden.
The fish have been so abundant this summer and autumn in the Hudson that Tom Lake, a consulting naturalist for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, said he saw schools of the fish 128 miles north of Bayonne.